Consort of Fire: A Paranormal Reverse Harem Novel (The Witch's Consorts Book 4)

by Eva Chase

  “All right,” I said. “That’s a great idea. Let’s really make the place ours.”

  Chapter Eight

  Rose

  I wasn’t sure what time it was when my phone started ringing, but I’d been asleep for just long enough for my head to feel muggy as I woke up, and the sky outside my bedroom window was completely dark. Seth, who’d stayed for dinner and ended up spending the night, stirred next to me. He hugged me where his arm was looped around my waist as if encouraging me to stay put.

  My heart was already thumping too fast for that. Why would anyone be calling me this late unless it was an emergency?

  Reluctantly, I scooted out of my consort’s embrace and grabbed the phone off the bedside table. The number was Imogen’s. I stared at it for a second, dazed, trying to figure out why the hell one of the witches staying under my roof would be phoning me instead of walking across the hall if she wanted to talk. Then I shook myself a little more awake and hit the talk button.

  “Imogen?” I said, managing to sound reasonably conscious.

  “Hi, Rose,” she said in her usual bubbly tone. “I, um, I’m sorry to be calling this late. I just—I’m in a bar in the town, and they’re closing soon, and I’m starting to think I probably shouldn’t drive myself back.”

  The more she talked, the more I noticed the slight slur to her words. She giggled as she finished that statement. One of the guests I’d been trying to protect had flown the coop and gotten drunk? When had she even left?

  “Okay,” I said, sitting up and rubbing the last bits of sleep from my eyes. “What’s the bar’s name? I’ll come get you.”

  “Ummm… Oh, here, it’s on the coaster.” Imogen giggled again. “The Caravan. You know that place?”

  I couldn’t say I’d ever gone drinking in town, but it was small enough that I’d at least passed by most of the businesses. The Caravan was just off the main square, about a block from the cafe that Seth and Kyler’s mom baked for.

  “I do,” I said. “Stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I shoved myself out of bed and cast about for something to wear. Seth straightened up as I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that were the first things I’d been able to lay my hands on. “What’s going on?” he asked, his drowsiness fading quickly behind his concern.

  “Apparently Imogen went out bar-hopping,” I said. “I’m picking her up from The Caravan. It shouldn’t take very long.”

  Seth made a dismissive sound and reached for his own clothes. “I’ll come with you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He shot me a look. “You really think I’m going to get a lot of sleep lying here alone wondering how the drunks in town are treating you?”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “They’re not going to be that bad, are they?”

  “It doesn’t matter how friendly people are when they come in; there are always at least a couple who’ve turned into assholes by closing time. We’ll take my truck. You can focus on Imogen if she needs it.”

  “Fine, fine.”

  We slipped downstairs and out to the driveway where Seth had parked the truck. At least taking it out would make less noise than opening up the garage. No need to wake Gabriel too. Seth hopped into the driver’s seat, and I climbed in beside him, clutching my purse. Imogen hadn’t phoned again. I wanted to think that was a good sign.

  I kept the window down as we drove into town, letting the cool night air wash over me. Most of the buildings were dark, no illumination on the roads except the glow of the streetlamps. When we turned the corner by the bar, its door was open, strains of music and yellow light spilling out.

  Seth parked outside, and we headed in together. Imogen was sitting at a table right by the door, her freckled face flushed almost as red as her hair and her shoulders hunched. The few guys still perched at the bar glanced over at us but stayed put.

  “Hey,” I said. “Ready to go?”

  She nodded and got up. Her first step was wobbly, but then she found her feet. I took her forearm just in case. Seth nodded to the guys at the bar. A couple of them nodded back, but one, a young-ish man with coarse black hair, grimaced.

  “Your friend is a real tease,” he said. “Maybe she should stick to drinking at home if she doesn’t like company.”

  “We’re taking her home now,” Seth said evenly, but his shoulders tensed.

  “I’m sorry,” Imogen said when we got outside. “I just… I couldn’t sleep. I was feeling so restless. I figured it couldn’t hurt to just drive into town and see what was going on down here. Enjoy myself a little.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know what that jerk was talking about, but you don’t owe anyone anything.”

  I got into the back seat with her, watching for any sign that she was going to need a stop at the side of the road to empty some of that alcohol out of her. But she didn’t seem incredibly drunk, just pretty tipsy. She leaned her head against the glass of the window as Seth started the engine.

  “How long have you been down here?” I asked her.

  “A few hours. I didn’t want to bother you. It’s such a short drive. I guess I’ll have to come back and get my car tomorrow.”

  “I can come get it,” I said. “It’s a short walk too. You know it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the town, right? It’s just that you’re not as protected outside the estate. If you do want to get out and see the sights, it’s better if you wait until I can go with you. Or even Lesley.” At least the older witch had some magic of her own.

  “I just wanted to see what it’d be like,” Imogen murmured. Her eyes closed. For a few moments, I thought she was dozing off. But then she added, “I thought maybe I’d know what I want to do if I could just light my spark, even a little bit.”

  I glanced over at her. “Did you light it?” I asked. That guy had called her a tease. Maybe she’d made out with him a little, and he was peeved that she’d stopped things there.

  She shook her head with a jostling of her curls. Her voice turned almost dreamy. “I meant to. We were talking, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Kind of cute. I could have kissed him. I could have done lots with him. I was thinking about it. But then he leaned in and put his hand on my knee, and I just…” She stopped, her brow furrowing. “What if it ruins me? Being with someone like that. Someone unsparked.”

  The corner of my mouth quirked up, but my stomach knotted at the same time. “It can’t ruin you,” I said. “A lit spark is a lit spark. It’s not as if the magic can tell who helped you wake it up.”

  “But who’s going to want me?” Imogen said, starting to slur again. “Who’s going to want to be my consort if I’ve been messing around with men who aren’t even witching?”

  “Anyone who counts won’t care at all,” I said, but that wasn’t the whole truth and I knew it. I remembered the way my ex-fiancé had sneered when he’d caught me with two of my consorts. How my father had talked about them. Most of the witching world looked down on anyone unsparked. If her aunt and uncle caught wind of a dalliance like that, they’d have one more thing to harangue her about. “You wouldn’t have to tell them anyway.”

  “No. I guess not. But I’d know.”

  She fell silent as we pulled past the gate. We parked close to the house.

  “Thank you for picking me up,” Imogen said. “I’m sorry again about the trouble. I can get myself to bed—you don’t have to worry, really.”

  She headed to the front door, swaying a little but steady enough that I let her go. I closed the truck door and leaned against it, sweeping my hands back into my hair.

  Seth came around to my side and propped himself next to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course,” I said. “It was fine. I told you it would be.”

  “I just meant the stuff she was saying— I’m sure she wasn’t trying to criticize you.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might be. “I know,” I said, feeling suddenly twice as tired. “She was
just saying what most of the witching world thinks.”

  “We don’t need to worry about the rest of the witching world,” Seth said. “We’re fine right here, aren’t we?”

  “We are.” But Imogen’s stray comments gnawed at me all the same. The unfairness of it—that I’d had to fight so hard for my consorts, that even after I had, even if we brought the Frankfords down and could live without that threat hanging over us, there would always be more of the same if on a smaller scale. People in my society lived and breathed those prejudices with about as much thought as they gave to the air around them.

  I didn’t need the oath to stop me from broadcasting the truth about my consorting. I wouldn’t have thought it was smart to shout it out widely anyway.

  Even with witches coming to me for shelter and support, when it came right down to it, I was alone.

  I shook off that thought. I knew that wasn’t literally true. Naomi had never acted like she judged me. And I had my consorts. That was enough.

  I twined my fingers with Seth’s and walked back to the house with him, wishing I didn’t feel as if somehow the Frankfords had already won in the ways that mattered most.

  Chapter Nine

  Jin

  I wasn’t sure I was ever going to feel totally comfortable in Rose’s manor house. The place felt too much like the historic buildings I’d wandered around in when I’d traveled across Europe, tagging along on my dad’s tours, and nothing at all like the places I’d actually lived in. But adding my own touch in the narrow mural I was painting along the top of the walls got me partway there. The pungent smell of the paint fumes and the streaks of bright color against the reserved beige and ivory brought a little of me into the space.

  Rose’s cousin Naomi was working on the other side of the room, imbuing the glyphs with protective magic. Rose had handled the bedrooms herself, and she would have kept going if Naomi hadn’t insisted she take a break.

  “One last way I can pitch in before I head back to New York,” she’d said. She was leaving this afternoon.

  Now, as I dabbed a last bit of paint to the final corner, she stepped back from the wall and sighed. “We don’t need this kind of protection back on the Levesque property, but I’ve got to say, it looks so gorgeous I’m tempted to hire you anyway.”

  “Hey,” I said. “The next time we’re out that way, let me know and I’ll bring the paints. It probably couldn’t hurt to have some extra security, right?”

  “I suppose not.” She paused, a shadow crossing her expression. “Maybe we’re not all that safe. Rose said we shouldn’t need to worry… but she didn’t think you all would have to be taking precautions like this after whatever she agreed to either, did she?”

  “After the way Frankford’s guy was poking around, and hearing that the witch from one of the other families had heard something that sounded threatening, she doesn’t want to take any chances.” I rinsed my brush and carried my set-up carefully down the tall step-ladder. “No one’s made any kind of attack since we’ve been back. And it’s been almost a month now.”

  “But it feels better having as much security as possible in place, doesn’t it?” Naomi said.

  I didn’t like to think of my life that way—like a cage we were building around ourselves to keep the bad guys out, but also in some ways holding us in. But after the battles we’d had to fight just making it back here alive, I couldn’t deny we needed it.

  “It does,” I said. “If you want, I could make some portable pieces, ones you could take back on the plane and hang in whichever rooms you’d want them the most.”

  Naomi flashed me a grateful smile. “Thanks. That’s really lovely of you to offer. I don’t want to distract you from the work you’re doing here, though. You’re the ones really under fire. And I don’t know how much we can trust my Aunt Irene. She’ll be poking around after I get back home—you can be sure of that. If she’s passing information on to the Frankfords or whoever, trying to stop Rose so the rest of the family doesn’t get implicated…” She grimaced and shook her head.

  “She still hasn’t owned up to tattling on us, huh?” I said.

  “Nope. She acted all offended when I even suggested it. But the timing of when she saw my message to my mom and when the enforcers found us… And she really wasn’t happy about me going with you guys at all. It makes me sick thinking about it, but what can you do? She’s always been a hard-ass. I just figured she’d have more loyalty to Rose as part of the family.”

  “Family’s a strange thing,” I said, sorting my supplies back into the larger carrying case I was storing them in at the manor. “People are always making decisions about who counts and who doesn’t. I’ve got a few relatives who don’t see me as a full Lyang because my parents raised me totally Americanized. I don’t follow fast enough when they’re speaking in Korean; I haven’t been over to visit the relatives ‘back home’ often enough. The way I look at it, you pick the people who show they’re really going to act like family, and the rest, well, their loss.”

  “Yeah,” Naomi said quietly. “It just hurts. You always want to think your family has the same values you do. For her to not only let this slide but actively help them…” She shuddered. “And I don’t even know half of what’s going on.”

  “It’s a pretty crappy situation all around.”

  “I wish I had a better idea what we’re up against. Knowing there’s this stuff you all know that you can’t tell me about, with all the things I already know… It’s hard to feel safe like that.”

  She looked so uneasy right then that I was hit with a pang of guilt that I couldn’t tell her more. But I was bound by the oath just as much as Rose was.

  “If Rose finds a way around it, you know you’ll be the first person she goes to,” I said. “There’s one good thing that came out of this mess, right? I don’t think she’s had anyone she can count on outside of us before you two reconnected.”

  Naomi’s smile came back, softer this time. “It’s hard to be upset about that part. I’d stay longer, but my consort is going to start thinking I’ve set up my own little harem over here without him.”

  I chuckled. “You could always bring him along next time. He could join in with your new harem.”

  She laughed too, her mood lighter. I went to wash my hands with more of a sense of accomplishment.

  I had my own family obligation today, but one I didn’t mind fulfilling. I’d only seen my mother once since we’d gotten back from our unexpected road trip of sorts, and then just for a chat. We were supposed to be acting like everything was normal. I knew the other guys, the ones with family in town, had been making a point to keeping in regular contact. So when Mom had texted me asking me over for lunch, I’d told her sure.

  I’d talked to my dad on the phone, but who knew when I’d see him again. He’d wrapped up his South American tour with the band he was playing bass for and then he’d scored a new gig that had him in an L.A. recording studio on a tight schedule. For as long as I could remember, he’d been out of town at least as often as he was here.

  On my way through town, I swung by the bakery and picked up Mom’s favorite rye. She’d left the inner door of her bungalow open so the breeze could come through the screen door. I gave it a light rap and stepped inside.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Jin!” she called from the kitchen. “On time for once, hmm?” Her tone was gently ribbing.

  “And I even brought the bread,” I said, ambling over and setting it on the table.

  “Oh, perfect, I was just getting down to the heel of my last loaf.” She tucked her short bob back behind her ears and ducked to retrieve the fixings from the fridge. “I was thinking we could sit out back on the deck, it’s so nice out. The wasps haven’t been too bad this year.”

  “Works for me.”

  We assembled our sandwiches in tandem, and I carried both plates out to the patio table on the small deck that overlooked the yard, which was half vegetable garden, half flowering extravaganza. Da
d might not be here all that often, but his gigs paid well enough that Mom hadn’t bothered going back to full-time work since the Hallowells had fired her from their gardening staff. That meant she had plenty of time to work on her own gardens.

  Mom brought out iced tea and poured us both a full glass. We sat back and dug in, not saying much at first, just enjoying the meal and the view. The scent rising off the flowers was a perfect perfume, which I guessed was why the wasps liked to hang out back here lots of the time.

  “You’ve talked to your father recently?” Mom said after a while.

  “Yep. Sounds like he’s having a blast even with how busy they’re keeping him in the studio.”

  “He’s always happiest when he’s creating something.” A fond smile lit Mom’s face. Watching her, my gut twisted a little. She never seemed unhappy with the way their relationship worked, but I found it hard to believe she never got lonely, never wished he loved her a little more and the music a little less. The way I felt about Rose, I’d never have gone off without her for months every year.

  “You used to be the same way,” she added, glancing over at me with a slight narrowing of her eyes that put me on instant alert. My mom had been pretty easy-going in general when I was growing up, but I could spot her strict side coming out in an instant. She didn’t usually try to pull it on me these days.

  “I still am,” I said easily. “I was just doing some painting today.” I held up my hand, displaying the flecks of color I hadn’t quite managed to wash off.

  “Not the way you used to,” Mom said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You’ve changed in the last couple months. Ever since Rose Hallowell got back into town.”

  The bread I’d been chewing turned sour in my mouth. I swallowed it. Mom had never even hinted she had a problem with Rose before. “I don’t think Rose being back has changed anything.”

  “Your father told me you turned down the chance to travel with him like you two used to.”