by R. J. Blain
“How did she do that?” Mal asked out loud.
“She’s a housekeeper. It’s what she does.”
Mal started, glaring at Edna, who’d materialized in the chair beside her. She appeared to have come through the events of the night before okay, though quite a bit faded. Relief loosened the bands clamped around Mal’s heart.
She smiled. “It’s like you think that answers the question.”
Edna shrugged. “You are a witch. You do witchy things. She’s a housekeeper. She keeps the house of Effrayant.”
Mal turned her attention back to LeeAnne, who’d been called over to the front desk. So she could put an elevator where one hadn’t been? Did that mean she could rearrange the entire place just as easily? That actually made a lot of sense. With so many different kinds of magical guests, the spaces and accommodations would have to be fluid to take care of all the various needs.
She turned back to Edna. “Are you okay? Is everybody else okay? What happened?”
“We are fine, though we need replenishment. Particularly Merrow. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. We’ll be at the stations today, restoring ourselves.”
“What happened to you?”
Edna stared off, clearly seeing something in her memories.
“Law discovered that the kidnappers had taken the Leshiy children into the wildwood. Except it turned out that they didn’t take them; they just dumped the children.” Edna’s lip curled. “They expected the wildwood to do their dirty work. They never wanted anyone to find the children or identify who took them.”
Mal had never seen the ghost so angry. She vibrated with her rage. “The kidnappers stole the leshonky from their bower and tossed them over the wildwood border like tossing away garbage. Law was able to re-create the moment with a spell, though he could not see the perpetrators. They covered their tracks.”
She looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap, her legs bent primly. “We went into the wildwood, all of us, and began to search. But it is not safe for anyone. Not ghosts, not even a housekeeper.”
“But the wildwood is within Effrayant’s boundaries. LeeAnne has nearly absolute power here. So does Law.”
Edna shook her head. “She guards its boundaries, and she keeps others from stumbling over its borders, but Tazho alone rules there. Law only serves Effrayant.”
Which meant Law and LeeAnne, as powerful as they were, had walked into serious danger. Wildwoods were places of primordial magic. The laws of normal magic didn’t work there, making it dangerous to put even a foot inside. Only the spirit of the wildwood could command and control its power, and most of the time, those spirits weren’t particularly sane, though Tazho seemed to be an exception.
Mal might have lost Law.
At the thought, everything inside her contracted from the possibility. All the same, the raw truth of it rubbed against the sharp spikes of knowledge. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know.
Her mouth twisted in a smile. Turnabout was fair play. She was always freaking Law out by putting herself into life-and-death situations. She could hardly complain when he did the same. Except that she totally would.
“Here you are.”
Law settled a hand on Mal’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze before sitting across from her. Meanwhile, Edna had vanished. He waved to the waiter to bring coffee before settling his gaze on Mal. His eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles. He ran a hand over his jaw. He hadn’t come to bed the previous night, but he must have gone back to the apartment to shower and shave, because his jaw was smooth, and his hair was wet.
Her relief at seeing him made her stay silent as she absorbed him. She had no idea how she’d managed to stay away from him for six years. She had no idea how she’d managed to stay away for him for five minutes, in all honesty.
“Have you seen Elliot?”
Mal blinked, not expecting the question. “He was in the apartment when I left. What’s he done now?”
Law blew out a breath “Nothing that I know of, but I’d sure like to corral him before the pixies arrive.”
The corner of Mal’s mouth quirked. “Are you afraid of what they’ll do to him? Or what he’ll do to them?”
Law grimaced. “Both, or worse, that they’ll figure out a way to work together.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m meeting LeeAnne, but I could look for him after that.”
“Meeting LeeAnne?” Law’s voice went hard. “Why?”
“No idea.” She eyed him. Was he worried that LeeAnne would say or do something to her? Or did he think Mal would piss off the housekeeper? Not that she hadn’t pissed LeeAnne off plenty since she’d first arrived.
“We could look for Elliot,” Edna said, shimmering into view at the next table. The ghosts had taken to making themselves scarce in order to give Mal and Law privacy. Not that they made it obvious or anything. Apparently, they were romantics.
“I thought you were recharging today?”
“We’ll take shifts, so we all have a chance to keep refreshing.”
She smiled. All the ghosts had a particular fondness for Elliot. Somehow, they could pet and snuggle him despite being incorporeal. All of them had the ability to go poltergeist, at least to some level, but that took a lot of energy, and because of that, snuggling pets wasn’t something they often chose to do. Besides, most animals, especially cats, didn’t like ghosts. But then again, cats didn’t really like anybody.
Elliot was different. He was like a puppy when it came to the ghosts, which was probably why LeeAnne still had any underwear left at all. If she did.
“I’ll go let the others know.” With that, Edna vanished once again.
Silence fell. The waiter brought more coffee. Mal scrounged for something to talk about when Law seemed lost in thought.
“Did you figure out who killed the giants?” she asked finally.
Was work really the only thing they had to talk about?
He frowned. “No. Stacking them like that was a statement; though what it said, I have no idea. They were dead and dismembered before that. I think you’re right that they were looking for the talisman and that’s why they were hacked up. That and maybe our bad guys got pissed and took it out on the bodies.”
“Why didn’t you or LeeAnne know something was going on?” That was the question that had been bugging Mal the most.
Law shook his head, the muscle in his jaw flexing. “Because they were guests, or they were invited onto the property. This is a big wedding and representatives from every clan will be here. Same with pixies. So while both sides haven’t officially checked in yet, they’ve been established as guests and allowed to come and go for the purposes of wedding planning and to negotiate alliance details on neutral territory. Plus they’ve been drop-shipping in various supplies. All that’s been going on for a few months. Anybody with permission to be here wouldn’t trigger an alarm.”
So it could be any among hundreds, maybe thousands.
“What about the murders? Shouldn’t those have hit your radar?”
He nodded. “I don’t know why they didn’t. That worries me. I’d have to have been drugged out of my mind—which I wasn’t—or they found a way around the security spells somehow. I’m tied directly to Effrayant, so to get around them is impossible as far as I know, and yet they managed.” He shook his head. “It worries me. If they could do that, what else could they do?”
Silence fell again. Mal chewed the inside of her lip, her imagination running wild. She sighed. She wanted to help, but there was precious little she could do.
“What’s wrong?” Law’s hand covered hers.
She looked up, surprised. “Nothing. Why?”
“You just heaved a long sigh and have a look like you just lost your best friend.” He frowned as he bent forward. “Look, Mal, I know you’re used to being on your own and this is all new but give it a chance. We’ll figure out how to make you happy.”
Her bro
ws drew together. How did he get there from talking about Effrayant and the security issues? “I’m happy.” She said it a little too loudly, a little too defiantly.
He gave a humorless laugh. “No, you aren’t. Happy Mal is relaxed and flamboyant and doesn’t give a shit. You, on the other hand, are tense, and you’re always backing off like you’re afraid of something. Afraid of me. Of us.”
She blinked at him, uncertain what to say. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She did walk on eggshells around him. She was afraid if she didn’t, she’d step on a landmine and blow everything up and ruin everything.
“I love you,” she said helplessly, feeling as if she were already standing on the landmine with no idea how she’d gotten there. They’d been talking about Elliot and the giant murders, for fuck’s sake. How did they end up talking about their relationship?
At her words, a smile flickered over his mouth but didn’t make it to his eyes. “I love you too, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to make you happy.”
She bit her lip and nodded slowly, forcing herself to be honest, even though she wanted nothing more than to smile brightly and pretend all of this was just him jumping to ridiculous conclusions.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said quickly. His hand tightened on hers. “You never have to be sorry for how you feel.”
“I’m not sorry for how I feel. Or rather, I am, but it’s not because I’m not happy. Or okay, I’m not entirely happy, but it’s not because we’re together. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s about us. It’s not what I want.”
Talk about a garbled mess. Law looked like she’d hit him. He let go of her hand and rubbed his forehead.
“I see.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you do, then you’re a better witch than I thought. I don’t even understand what I just said.”
“You said you’re not happy because being together isn’t what you want.” He said the words in a dead voice, his gaze glittering with emotion.
“I did not!”
He cocked his head, glaring. “What did you say, then?”
She ran her hands through her hair. It was longer than it had been. It hung down past her shoulders and had returned to her natural chestnut brown with blonde highlights. A so-called gift from So’la, her demon minion. She’d accidentally enslaved him, and now he thought it was fun to randomly change her hair. He said she had no style; therefore, he needed to give her some.
At least it was long enough to put in a ponytail.
She pulled her mind back from her wandering thoughts. Once again, she was finding a way to avoid dealing with her feelings for Law. What a chickenshit.
“What I meant was that I’m not entirely happy with how things are between us and—”
“And?” he prompted when she broke off.
“And maybe we should talk but somewhere private.” So that if she started crying or something equally humiliating, she wouldn’t have an enormous audience.
“Isn’t ‘we have to talk’ code for let’s break up? Why not just do it here? Get it over with?”
His lip curled and his eyelids had dropped so he looked sleepy. A defense mechanism. She’d used it often enough to hide her feelings.
“You want to talk here? Fine. We’ll talk here.” She folded her arms over her chest, her chin jutting as she glared at him. Inside, she was shaking, tremors radiating through her like tiny earthquakes.
“I am not happy because I feel like I’m fucking this up. We’re always being so careful and yeah, I know you say you love me, but most of the time you act more like I’m your roommate. We used to talk easily about everything when we worked for Acadia, but now it’s all safe ground: Elliot, work, the ghosts, guest antics, the weather, politics. I feel like if I say the wrong thing, if I do the wrong thing, everything will break. Hell, this entire conversation is a perfect example of that. I was just trying to be honest and explain how I feel, and sure, I garbled it up. Sue me. At least I tried. It’s all so stupid and now you’re pissed as hell, and— Shit.”
The tears burning in Mal’s eyes escaped and rolled down her cheeks. She grabbed a linen napkin off the table and blotted her face.
Perfect. Just perfect. Nobody liked a crybaby. Men hated emotional women. For fuck’s sake, she hated emotional women. This was exactly what she was afraid would happen. If she’d just kept her stupid mouth shut and kept smiling, everything would have been fine. But no, she had to start blathering and make everything worse and now everybody was staring at her bawling her fool head off in the lobby.
She stiffened as Law gripped her arms and pulled her hands away from her face. He knelt in front of her.
“I’m an ass,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Mal’s first instinct was to tell him to fuck off. Very adult and certain to make things better. Not.
She took a breath and let it out. “We seem to suck at relationships.”
He chuckled. “I can’t argue. I want to do better.”
“Maybe we need a book. Or a therapist.”
“Anything, Mal. As long as it keeps us together, I’ll do anything.”
She’d meant it as a joke, to lighten the moment, but his heartfelt words struck her hard. The raw emotion and honesty without any attempt to hide it.
“I am scared to fuck this up,” she said again. “I can’t seem to do anything right.”
“Let’s make a rule,” he said. “We don’t quit. We don’t leave, no matter what happens. We fight for each other forever.”
“I can live with that,” Mal said, her voice thick.
“Good.”
He pulled her closer, so they were within kissing distance.
“I can’t live without you, Mal. So I need you to be all in. Don’t run away from us again. Don’t give up on us. I never will.”
He pressed his lips to hers, kissing her softly, sweetly, like they had all the time in the world. Which they didn’t because just then, the pixies arrived and all hell broke loose.
Chapter Six
The noise of shrieks, growling, high-pitched laughter, terrified screaming, and—maybe a tornado? —broke through Mal’s euphoria. She pulled back slightly, feeling Law’s warm breath on her cheeks. His gaze held her locked, intense and happy.
“Did you hear that?” she asked as something big crashed to the floor and shattered, rattling the walls. It sounded an awful lot like a chandelier. One of the big ones, the size of a VW bus.
Whirring sounds interspersed the other noises, a kind of rolling, buttery hum.
“Nope,” he said with perfect sincerity as another crash sounded, this one not quite as loud, though wetter, less glassy.
“I think something might be happening,” Mal said in her role as Queen of the Obvious. She couldn’t look away, totally hypnotized by the promises in his eyes. He’d never looked at her like this, so open, so much peeled back and exposed. It humbled her. Sent a bolt of fear sizzling into her soul. Could she trust him as much? Was she even capable?
She drew back, only a half an inch, but it was far enough. Too far.
Disappointment clouded Law’s face, and his eyes shuttered. He started to shift back.
A different kind of panic made Mal grab his arm.
For a moment she found herself in the past. She’d spent most of her life hiding herself, protecting herself. When her mother died, Mal had been devastated. That, she might have recovered from, but then her father, a necromancer, had decided to raise his beloved wife from the dead.
Mal couldn’t even bear to remember that time. Her mother hadn’t been anything like herself. She’d been a shambling shell, lost and afraid, torn between the afterlife and the present. Her spirit had passed over, and her husband had pulled it back, unlike Mal’s ghosts who had never gone over in the first place.
Except, only part of her mother had come back, and living with her had been the worst kind of hell. Mal had come to hate the woman she had once loved more than anyone else alive, and had hated her father for
making it so she couldn’t think of her mother without disgust, without thinking of the smell, the way her flesh rotted, her skin turned green and sloughed away…
Because of him, she couldn’t remember her mother without searing regret and horror. Because of him, Mal had been forced to kill her mother a second time and make it so her father couldn’t raise her again.
The gruesome act had destroyed her but not as much as her father’s reaction. He’d viciously attacked her, physically and verbally. He’d been out of his mind with grief and had beaten her nearly unconscious, and she’d let him. When he was done, she’d crawled away and had never seen him again, but she couldn’t escape the damage. She couldn’t make herself love, couldn’t make herself trust anyone. If her own father, the one she’d trusted the most, the one who should have protected and comforted her, could hurt her so deeply, then how could she trust anyone?
So she trusted herself and didn’t let anybody inside.
Until Law.
He’d been her partner and she’d trusted him more than anyone, even her father. She’d tried to tell him about her growing horror at killing but couldn’t make him understand. Maybe if she’d told him about her mother… but it was too great a wound to reopen. Desperate, in pain, she had run.
She was still running.
“You can’t do that,” she said, her fingers digging into him like he was trying to pull away, which he wasn’t. “You can’t just back off and let me off the hook. I’m not the stable one right now. I’m willing but I’ve got bad habits and a lot of baggage. You’ve got to call me on my shit.”
“I don’t want to push you so hard, you have to leave. Not like before.”
“It’s different now. I didn’t know you loved me then, and you didn’t know how bad off I was. I’m all in. Even if I run and hide, I’ll come back. Nothing is going to hurt me worse than losing you to my own cowardice; I promise.”
She flinched as a particularly shrill scream cut the air followed by laughter and loud clapping. It sounded like a full concert hall. That could not be good.