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

by Eva Chase

  A grin stretched across my face. I set off again, back toward the Hallowell estate, with more sense of purpose than I’d had since I’d stolen that hard drive in the first place.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rose

  I’d thought I wanted a little time alone after dinner, but the manor’s kitchen felt far too big and empty when I was the only one in it. When the door swung open and Lesley peeked inside, my spirits lifted.

  “Need a little help with that?” she said.

  I’d just started filling the sink with soapy water, the tang of lemon in my nose. The dirty dishes were stacked on the counter beside me. “You could dry, if you really want to,” I said. “I think there’s a dish towel around here somewhere… Over there, hanging from that cupboard handle.”

  Lesley plucked it off and came to stand beside the dish rack. I set the first few bowls into the water, and she cocked her head, watching me through her rectangular glasses.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  It was a simple question, but somehow so unexpected that my throat closed up. “Oh,” I said. “Okay. I mean, as well as I can be with everything that’s going on.”

  “I don’t mean to pry. It’s just hard not to notice… Gabriel went off somewhere. And you didn’t want him to go.”

  For a second, I couldn’t talk at all. “Yeah,” I managed.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay,” she said, holding up her hands. “I thought maybe… I don’t know if I can give any advice, really. But I know what it’s like to lose a consort. So, if you need to let anything out with someone who’s got the general idea, I’m here.”

  The offer was so kind that my eyes welled up despite my best attempts at self-control. “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know if I can compare our situations. He’s still alive. He could come back. I have no idea what it’s like, what you’ve been through.”

  She shrugged, but her gaze had gone distant. “It’s like a piece of yourself has been hollowed out, and nothing you can do will fill it. I don’t know if it ever gets completely better. But that hole does start to feel less hollow over time. The good memories fill it in. Finding other people you can count on.”

  “I can’t say I don’t have those. But it’s good to hear that the painful part gets better.” I paused. “Do you still think about him a lot? Your consort?”

  “Not as much as I used to right after he passed,” she said, tucking her mousy hair behind her ear. “But every day, definitely. On the harder days, every hour.” She shook her head. “That’s how I knew something was wrong, the way my parents were acting. It’s been less than a year. I’m not ready to form that kind of attachment with anyone else yet. I don’t know why they were so insistent… I couldn’t stand it anymore, the way they were trying to rush me.”

  My pulse stuttered as I remembered my recent conversation with Imogen. “Have you had any contact with your parents? Are they hassling you at all about staying here?”

  “I blocked them,” she said with uncharacteristic firmness. Her mouth set in something that was almost a smile. “It’s been a relief not having to deal with them going at me day in and day out.”

  I had to smile back. “You can keep them at a distance as long as you want. And remember what I promised you—I’m going to make it safe for you to go back and reclaim your estate if I possibly can. I got this property from my dad because of the way he treated me. We can do the same for you.”

  “I know,” she said quietly, but her smile grew a little. She picked up one of the bowls I’d gotten around to washing and rubbed the towel over it, considering it as she turned it in her hands. “You know, I was thinking… A lot of the trouble you’ve been having is focused on the guys, isn’t it? There are ways you could be more sure they could defend themselves if they needed to. The batons the male enforcers use—one of my grandmothers worked for the Assembly for a while magicking those. She’s talked about the process. I’m sure I could help you make something similar.”

  An actual magical weapon the guys could use to defend themselves? It might not have helped against the attacks on their families, but at least I could feel a little more secure when they were off the estate. “That would be amazing,” I said.

  The door murmured open, and I caught a glimpse of a matching set of tawny hair, curly here and short-cropped there.

  “There she is!” Kyler said. He ambled over, kissed my cheek with a hand on my waist, and then hopped up to sit on the counter on the other side of the stack of dishes, his legs dangling in a boyish pose.

  Seth followed behind his slimmer twin, looking more serious, as usual. “Thalia mentioned you sent the staff home early,” he said, stopping next to Ky with his arms folded over his broad chest.

  Lesley glanced at them and then me, looking amused. “We’ll talk more tomorrow morning?” she suggested, setting down her towel.

  “Definitely,” I said. She slipped out of the kitchen, leaving me to my consorts.

  “Why are you hiding away in here?” Ky asked.

  I shoved my hands deeper into the hot sudsy water to grab a plate. “I just wanted to do something definite,” I said. “Something I can feel with my hands. I don’t know. It’s kind of grounding, washing stuff.”

  “You still don’t have a dishwasher in this place, huh?” He craned his neck as he scanned the length of the kitchen. It’d been built to accommodate the parties that I guessed had been thrown a lot more often in earlier times when the Hallowell family had been larger. For most of the time I’d lived here, it’d been just me and my father. The house might have seen more activity after he’d married my stepmother, but we’d moved to Portland not long after that.

  Ky and Seth had been more familiar with this kitchen than most of the rest of the house. Their mom had worked in here when we’d employed a full kitchen staff, baking our bread and breakfast muffins and desserts.

  “Oh, there is,” I said, nodding to the stainless steel appliance on the other side of the room, next to the massive double-doored fridge. “But that wouldn’t be hands-on, letting a machine do all the work.”

  “Well, I’ve got good news about other things working,” Ky said with a grin. “The police took in two of the Frankfords’ allies this evening. I just saw the reports.”

  My heart leapt. I set the plate in the rack and turned to him. “They were able to use the evidence you arranged for them to find. Do you think the charges will stick?”

  “The one woman will have a pretty hard time getting out of everything. I think they’ll probably take her husband in too when they dig deeper. There was a ton of fraud and tax evasion and more with their business. The other guy’s case isn’t quite as egregious, but the fact that they arrested him at all is a good sign.”

  “What do witches usually do if they tangle with the unsparked law enforcement?” Seth asked me. “Can they magic their way free?”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes, maybe. But that usually depends on covering up the evidence so they’re not found out in the first place. Once there are computer records of the crime and the arrest, and all kinds of people are aware of the issue… Unless they’re vital to some mandate of the Assembly’s, the usual policy would be to see it as their own just punishment for their carelessness.”

  “Perfect.” Ky kicked his feet playfully. He was obviously enjoying his new role as anonymous avenger. “I’ve got a third couple I’m digging up some shady stuff on right now. If the trails lead me where I think they’re going, I’ll have them locked up in a few days. Actually, let me check my progress on that.”

  As he pulled out his tablet from the little satchel he had slung from his shoulder, Seth stepped closer. He rubbed my back as I set the last of the plates in the rack. “It’s coming together,” he said. “We’re really making progress now. If Ky can put enough of the people involved behind bars, they won’t be able to conspire anymore.”

  The remaining witches could still attack us, though. And after our first two strikes,
I suspected any other of the Frankfords’ colleagues who’d been engaging in questionable practices were scrambling to erase any proof right now. It seemed unlikely that people as high up as the Frankfords themselves would have left proof in the first place. But it was a start. It was real ground gained. I smiled at him, drying my hands on a towel, and leaned in for a quick kiss. “It feels good to be getting somewhere.”

  Kyler’s feet went still with a thump against the cabinets. When I glanced up, he’d stiffened, his gaze glued to the tablet’s screen. The small piece of happiness I’d found vanished under a wave of panic.

  “What?” I said.

  His head jerked up. The color had drained from his face. He blinked at me, his lips parting and then pressing together again.

  Seth moved to his side and poked at the tablet. His expression darkened a few moments later. “Is that…?”

  Ky nodded.

  “What?” I said again. “Tell me what’s going on, or at least show me.”

  I held out my hand. The twins exchanged a glance. “Whatever it is, you’re going to have to tell me eventually, aren’t you?” I said.

  Ky hesitantly extended the tablet to me. “There could be other explanations than what it looks like,” he said. “There’s no way of knowing what’s definitely going on.”

  The screen was paused at the beginning of a video. I recognized it immediately: it was the traffic cam Ky had hacked into on the intersection near the Frankfords’ Portland house. We’d been checking the footage periodically to see who he might be meeting with at home. So far it hadn’t turned up much. What could they be so upset about now?

  I hit play, my gut clenching. A couple of cars cruised by. Then a taxi arrived, pulling up to the curb at the corner of the screen where you could see just the corner of the fence outside the Frankfords’ house.

  The back door of the cab opened. A head of dark red hair came into view, a familiar set of well-muscled shoulders, a stride I would have known anywhere. Gabriel crossed the sidewalk and out of view of the camera, heading toward the Frankfords’ house.

  My stomach plummeted. The tablet shook in my hands. I set it down on the counter before I could drop it.

  “He went to them. He went right to them.” I swallowed hard, nausea bubbling inside me. “When is that footage from?”

  “Yesterday afternoon,” Ky said quietly. “It could be— We don’t know for sure that he even went to their house.”

  “Who else’s house would he have been going to there?” I said.

  He didn’t have an answer for that. I dropped my face into my hands. Seth put his arm around me, steadying me with his embrace, but part of me wanted to cringe away.

  Did I deserve that comfort? I didn’t want to believe that Gabriel had not just left me but gone to my greatest enemy, but there he’d been. I’d seen it with my own eyes.

  The way he’d talked right before he’d left… Did he really think I was so dangerous he’d go to those lengths to make sure I didn’t do anything worse? That I was more dangerous than the Frankfords’ faction and that monster we’d seen in the cave?

  I couldn’t wrap my head around it, but I’d heard the horror in his voice when he’d accused me of becoming someone he couldn’t love anymore. That had been real.

  “The Frankfords could be using some kind of magic on him,” Seth put in. “Especially if he’s taken off his protective token. I didn’t see it on him in the video.”

  Ky skimmed back through the recording to check. He squinted at the screen. “It’s hard to tell with the limited resolution,” he said. “But I don’t see the string around his neck where I’d expect to.”

  “So either he’s gone to the Frankfords of his own free will or they’ve used the doubt he was feeling to control him,” I said. Both of those possibilities were awful.

  “We’ll get him back,” Seth said firmly. “No matter what’s going on. We’ll end this, and we’ll find him, and—”

  “He doesn’t want to come back,” I said. “I can’t force him to still act as my consort.” My hands dropped to my sides and balled into fists. My stomach was churning, but a sense of resolve rose through the nausea. “We have to be better than them. No more hurting any of them. No more lashing back just because I can. Everything through official channels, witching or unsparked—like those arrests.” I couldn’t be a woman one of the guys I loved saw as a monster. I couldn’t let our enemies change me like that.

  Ky nodded. Seth’s arm tightened around me. “Where does that leave us, then?” he asked.

  I paused. “Maybe we’ve been trying too hard to find a loophole, a way to work around the conditions of the oath. It’s gotten us thinking the wrong ways. If we focus on what we can talk about, what we can tell people, completely openly, then the oath doesn’t even matter.”

  “What have we got that it doesn’t cover?” Seth said.

  Ky piped up. “Anything we knew from before we saw those records. All the things that Rose’s dad was doing around her consorting. The fact that Frankford helped him with that scheme. The way they arrested us and then pursued us across the country.”

  “That part won’t get us anywhere,” I said. “They arrested us because of the illegal magic I used on my father, and they can say they were trying to apprehend us after we escaped. But there’s also the Cliff and the demon and the little bit my father explained about that. The problem is just how we convince anyone we’re not crazy, that those things actually happened. I’d have trouble believing it if I hadn’t been there!”

  “Yeah,” Seth said. “I didn’t see it, and even though I trust you completely, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of demons.”

  Something in his words set off a spark of an idea in my mind. I gripped his arm where it was wrapped around my waist. “Say that again.”

  He frowned. “I just mean the whole story sounds crazy unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes.”

  A smile started to curl my lips. “That’s it. We don’t need to get out to the Cliff to gather proof, or even to try to destroy it. We need to use it as the proof. If we can call the right people in the Assembly for a ‘meeting’ with the Frankfords there…”

  “Then they’ll see what they’ve been up to with their own eyes,” Ky filled in. “But we still need enough access to be able to clone his business phone and the right code word.”

  “If he’s even still using the same code,” Seth said. “Gabriel knew we’d found that out.”

  And he might pass that information on to the Frankfords. They might change their tactics. I bit my lip.

  “Let’s not worry about that yet,” Ky said quickly. “We need to know how Frankford is setting up meetings with them. We’ll need a way to contact them as him either way. We start from there and figure out the rest once we have that information.”

  Seth nodded. His phone pinged with an alert. He fished it out and glanced at the screen, and his jaw set. He shoved it back in his pocket without answering the text.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Nothing important,” he said. “Ordinary life stuff. I can deal with it later.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Hey,” he said, pulling me to him again and kissing my temple. “Everything’s fine. I just want to focus on you right now.”

  Ky clapped his hands and hopped off the counter. “I’ll get back to work on hacking my way to that phone number.”

  Seth looked abruptly uncertain. There wasn’t a whole lot I’d thought of that either of us could do to help that effort. He dropped his arm to take my hand in his. “Do you want to do some more of that form practice?” he asked. “Strengthen our connection even more?”

  He didn’t say it, but I had a feeling we were all thinking it—I might need those solid bonds even more now that one of them was gone. Now that the whole balance of our group had been thrown off again. But I balked.

  “It’s getting late. If you’re getting tired…”

  When we’d been on the road b
efore, he’d worn himself out trying to keep my spark brightly lit. The intimacy between us had become painful for him. The thought of him pushing himself too hard again brought a lump into my throat.

  He shook his head. “I’m good. You don’t have to worry about that, Rose. I promised you I’d tell you if I ever felt overwhelmed again, and I meant that.”

  The honesty in his voice reassured me. “All right,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come up with another plan, a better one, with that to clear my head.”

  “Rose,” Ky said, cocking his head as he looked at us. “Do you remember a little while back I asked you about the deeper consorting? The permanent one, that allows the strongest bond?”

  My heart hiccupped. “Yes,” I said cautiously. “And I said I didn’t think it was a good idea. Not when you’re all so new to the witching world.” The lifebond consorting was rarely performed these days. A normal consort bond could be severed after a few years on the wishes of either party. But a lifebond… It really was permanent. It only ended if one of the consorts died—and when they died, their partner died too.

  “We know more now,” Ky said. “If it would give you more power to fight the Frankfords and their faction—”

  “No,” I said firmly before he could go on. My chest had constricted. “Not right now. Not with so much uncertain.”

  I was not tying any of the guys to me permanently when I’d already driven one to separate from me. I couldn’t do that to them, couldn’t let them take that risk.

  Who knew who I might be by the time this was over—and whether the rest of them would still want to stand by my side then?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rose