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

by Eva Chase

  Or you drew him in with magic. You’ve sent enough of that our way.

  I resent that implication. Mind-altering magic is against Assembly law, even if you’ve gotten away with it. Your dear fellow came of his own free will. And I’m sure the others will follow soon.

  “Rose,” Seth said, his voice low. “He’s just saying garbage to upset you. Let me.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got to—”

  But whoever I was talking to had already sent another message. You’ve heard what I have to say. Think carefully before you make any more moves. It’s a shame to live with regrets.

  Sounds like a lot of bluster to me, I shot back, but no further reply came. “I think they’re done,” I said. “Did you get enough?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Ky said, his gaze intent on his tablet. “If I can find the right cross-reference…”

  I let out a shaky breath. Seth took my hand, pulling me closer to him.

  “They’re just trying to rattle you like the assholes they are,” Damon said. “Don’t let them get to you. Don’t let him get to you.”

  Gabriel, he meant. I wouldn’t have been rattled anything like this if they hadn’t used him.

  Which was why they had, of course. They wanted to distract me from what mattered the most—taking them down.

  “Right,” I said. “Just the same thing they’ve been doing all along. Try to get at me through the people I care about.” I rubbed my temple. I couldn’t let that strategy work, not again.

  A fierce gleam lit in Damon’s eyes. “Any way we could turn that around on them? Or do they not care about anyone except themselves?”

  I paused. The idea sent a sliver of nausea through my gut, but at the same time, he might have a point. “They have a daughter,” I said, “in her thirties, already consorted… I don’t know what the situation is there. They never talked about her all that warmly. Other than…”

  “What?” Jin said when I hesitated again.

  “There is someone they always talked about a certain way,” I said. “I never heard them talk about anyone else like that… They have a grandson. He’s seven. Their ‘little treasure.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Damon

  When I arrived at the Hallowell estate in the hot mid-day sun to pick up Jin, he was waiting in the front hall. The paintings he’d done for my mom’s apartment were already packaged up.

  “I can unwrap them to show you them, so you can make sure you think she’ll like them,” he offered. “I went by what you said, but the way artistic tastes go, it can be hard to tell…”

  I waved him off. Like he wanted to spend any more time than he needed to on my troubles. It’d been embarrassing enough going to him after last evening’s little meeting and telling him I was pretty sure my mom had been affected, maybe a lot, so I definitely wanted a few of those enchanted artworks to hang around her apartment.

  I should have realized something was up with her in the first place, the way she was talking. How could I have believed she’d really think that way about Rose?

  Kyler loped out of the house while we were loading the paintings into the trunk, looking annoyingly chipper as ever. I’d gotten the impression he was spending more nights at the manor than in his apartment in town, what with all the digging he was doing through the Frankfords’ files. From what he’d said, he was worried that if he brought any device with the files away from the property, the Frankfords’ might figure out we’d copied them and come after us even harder. I figured he didn’t mind the excuse to keep Rose company at night.

  I guessed I couldn’t really fault him for that. The brainiac did have some catching up to do when it came to that kind of experience.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind me tagging along. We did my parents’ house this morning. I’d like to look around and see if I notice any common patterns that might tell us how the spell was set down or working or whatever.”

  “You never know how to turn off research mode, do you?” I said.

  He grinned. “It’s worked out well for us so far.”

  I couldn’t deny that. “Sure,” I said, even though I could already picture the faces the two of them were going to make when they saw Mom’s shabby place. She wasn’t going to be picky about the art. She’d be thrilled to have anything decent up at all. The best she had right now was a couple of faded poster prints tacked to the living room wall.

  Well, let them see how people who’d been a little less fortunate lived. I didn’t need to be embarrassed about that. If they wanted to look down their noses at my family like most people in town did, then let them.

  “How was your mother the last time you saw her?” Ky asked as we got in the car, already diving into the information-gathering part of the trip apparently.

  “I haven’t stopped by since she freaked out about me seeing Rose,” I said. “I figured she needed some cooling off time.” And I hadn’t wanted to risk hearing another rant like that one. I wanted to still like my mother when all this was over. “She’s been fine when I’ve checked in by text, but it’s pretty normal for us not to talk much except when I go see her. She’s busy with work.”

  “She’s cleaning for what’s-his-name, the guy who bought up all those properties on the south side, right?” Jin said.

  “Yeah. He expects long hours.” And he expected his employees to put up with a whole heap of nasty comments. I’d overheard him verbally leering at my mother once and the only reason the guy still had his dick attached was because she’d pleaded with me not to go off on him. She needed that job, she said. I was pretty sure she could have found something better. If she’d tried some longshots, something would have panned out, but she was afraid of people scoffing at her for even trying. She found leers easier to take than sneers.

  Thankfully, Jin didn’t make any comment about what other jobs Mom maybe could have gotten or what a step down it was to go from cleaning some majestic manor house to people’s apartments that weren’t really that much nicer than her own. I hit the gas and turned us toward town.

  In the middle of a weekday, the streets were particularly quiet. It didn’t take long to reach the house my mom lived on the second floor of. I parked in the driveway, and we each grabbed one of the paintings to bring up. Jin had done a large one for the living room and a couple of smaller ones for wherever we could reasonably put them.

  “She didn’t reply to my text saying we were coming by,” I said as we started up the rickety stairs along the side of the house. “Might have her phone turned off on the job. I’ve got a key anyway. Better that we get this stuff up as soon as possible. If she’s not here, I’ll stick around to show off her ‘present’.”

  I didn’t look back at the other guys as I talked, not really wanting to see their expressions as they took in the place. They were probably already looking forward to when they could get out of here.

  No one answered when I knocked on the door. I knocked again and then fished my keys out of my back pocket. The door squeaked as I opened it. A sour smell immediately filled my nose, so gross I winced.

  Normally Mom kept the apartment at least clean. What the hell was that?

  “Mom?” I called, heading in and setting down the packaged painting in the short front hall. “Are you home?”

  No answer, but the smell thickened. My pulse started to thump harder. I peeked into the living room and then turned to the kitchen.

  A leg was protruding, sprawled, from the other side of the table. My heart just about burst out of my chest. I threw myself around the table.

  Mom was slumped there on her stomach, her arms splayed, a pool of half-dried vomit on the floor near her face. Her skin was clammy when I touched her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered at the contact but stayed closed.

  Fuck. Fuck. What the hell did I do now?

  As panic blared through my body, Kyler dropped down next to my mom. His eyes widened, but he managed to keep his voice even. “We have to check for a pulse and make sure she’s
breathing,” he said. “If she’s not, I know CPR.”

  “You know, or you internet-know?” I couldn’t help muttering automatically.

  Ky gave a choked laugh. “Internet-know, but let’s hope that’s good enough, right?”

  As he pressed his fingers to the side of her neck, Jin’s voice carried from the doorway. “Yes, the second floor. She’s unconscious. I don’t know for how long, but it looks serious. Ten minutes? Okay. What should we do until then?”

  He had emergency services on the line. I held my hand by my mother’s nose and felt a wisp of breath at the same moment as Ky announced, “Got a pulse! It’s pretty erratic, though.”

  “They say to cover her up with a blanket or something,” Jin said. “To make sure she doesn’t go into shock.”

  I leapt up and ran into her bedroom. Oh, God, she wouldn’t want me to use her usual duvet, risk getting puke on it—she’d saved up to buy that one special. I snatched a spare wool blanket out of the closet and dashed back.

  Ky helped me roll Mom onto her side. Her head lolled so limply that my chest clenched like a vice. “The ambulance will be here soon?” I said to Jin, even though I’d heard what he’d said on the phone with my own ears.

  He nodded. “I’ll get the paintings up while we’re waiting. If this was another magical attack, maybe they’ll help her until the paramedics get here.”

  Right. They might even help more than any doctor could, depending on what those witching assholes had done to her. I checked Mom over one more time and, seeing no change, scrambled up. “I’ll help you. You take the living room and I’ll put one in the bedroom.”

  “This one would be good for that,” he said, shoving one of the paintings toward me. He handed me a couple of nails and braces. I grabbed a hammer from a drawer. One of the few tools Mom kept on hand.

  In the bedroom, I tore the plastic wrapping off the painting as quickly as I could—and froze for a second staring at the image. It was a spray of lilies, so perfectly painted you could almost believe they were leaning out of the canvas. I couldn’t see where the enchanted glyphs were woven in even though I knew to look for them.

  Mom was going to cry when she saw this, it was so nice. It must have taken Jin a while to pull that off.

  I shook myself out of the momentary daze and picked a spot to mount the painting. When I came out, I found Jin hanging the other small one in the hall. That one matched the bedroom picture, but with orange lilies instead of purple.

  I went around to the living room to check out the larger one and had to stop and stare again. It was a landscape, a meadow dotted with all kinds of flowers, the sun rising over treed hills in the distance.

  Jin came to stand beside me. “You said she liked flowers, especially lilies, and peaceful landscapes,” he said. “I tried to hit that as dead on as I could.”

  “You did an amazing job,” I said with bald honesty. I wasn’t any kind of an art connoisseur, but I knew a fantastic painting when I saw one. “She’s no critic, you know. She’d have been happy with something a lot more basic.”

  Jin shrugged. “If you’re going to do a thing, might as well do it well. My signature is on these, you know.”

  He winked at me, but there was a kindness in his smile that made me waver on my feet. I’d figured it was just a job to him, just busy work to make Rose happy since I mattered to her. But Jin looked honestly pleased that I appreciated the pictures. Hell, he and Ky had jumped in there the second they’d seen my mom was in trouble, as if she meant almost as much to them as she did to me.

  “Her pulse is feeling steadier!” Ky hollered from the kitchen. “I think the protections must be helping.”

  I hustled over to wait with Mom for the last couple minutes until the ambulance got here. My heart wrenched again, seeing her on the floor, but a weird sort of warmth had settled over me too.

  Whatever had happened to her, it was awful. I wanted to tear those pricks like the Frankfords limb from limb. But if I had to, I wouldn’t be alone. The other guys would be right there with me. I was suddenly sure of that.

  “Thanks,” I said as I brushed her hair back from her forehead. “For, well, everything.”

  “Of course,” Ky said. “Do you want us to stick with you going to the hospital? I don’t mind. I don’t have any plans I can’t delay.”

  I looked from him to Jin, who nodded to show the offer included him.

  Fifteen minutes ago, I wouldn’t have thought I’d want any of the other guys’ company for something like this. But now… there was actually a little comfort in the idea. I didn’t have to wait it out alone.

  For the first time since my dad had taken off all those years ago, I had more family than just Mom.

  “Yeah,” I said, the words sticking in my throat before I forced them out. “If you could… I’d like that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Rose

  My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles ached. I flexed my fingers, urging them to relax, but within a minute they’d clenched again.

  We had a new moon tonight, the sky dim except for a smattering of stars. The country roads were so quiet it almost felt as if the two of us in the car were the last people in the world. Damon, hunched over in the seat next to me with his head resting on the window, let out a soft rasp of sleeping breath. Even asleep, the muscles in his arms looked coiled tight.

  He’d tried to convince me that he should drive back, even though he’d run himself ragged pacing the halls while the doctors had worked on his mom and running around grabbing everything he could think of that would make her more comfortable once she was awake and in recovery. Despite himself, he’d nodded off within a few minutes of us leaving the hospital. I’d have to wake him up once we got back to the estate, but he deserved this rest.

  It was those memories—of his mom, wan and trembling, and Damon, his face stark with fear—that kept tearing through me, jarring against my nerves. The Frankfords or their lackeys had been responsible for this. That was the only explanation that made sense. The doctors hadn’t found anything wrong with Mrs. Scarsi that would have caused her to collapse like that. They’d dismissed it as food poisoning, but she couldn’t think of anything she’d eaten that would have caused that.

  And anyway, how huge of a coincidence would that be?

  I had no idea how they’d twisted their magic around the oath this time, but they’d managed it before. They’d shown they could be creative.

  After a while at the hospital, the other guys had left to find a pretense for hanging out with their parents for a while. Jin wanted to set up some sort of protections around his mother’s yard, and Lesley had offered to do the magicking while I was away. Jin was going to make more art for the twins’ dad’s hardware store and the café where their mom worked. But that still wasn’t enough.

  I didn’t think the Frankfords would be satisfied unless we were all dead. And right now every inch of me was burning to pay them back in kind.

  How would they feel if it was their grandson unconscious in a pool of his own vomit? Or buried under a fallen building? Would that make them realize what monsters they were?

  But I’d have to turn myself into a monster to show them that. I wouldn’t ever have put a kid’s life at risk, but part of me was willing to make a bluff of it, to push right up to the line between momentary fear and pain and actual trauma… and could I say for sure whatever I set up wouldn’t accidentally tip over?

  I could try to blaze through whatever protections the Frankfords had in place around their own home, their car, probably anywhere they spent any time these days… There was a chance I could manage it, and fast enough to be done before the Assembly came after me. If they were dead, this would all be over, wouldn’t it?

  No, there’d still be the demons on the other side of that portal. What if the Frankfords were the only ones who knew how to control them?

  But they couldn’t just get away with this.

  My mind bounced back and forth in
an exhausted circle. My rage had been simmering from the moment Kyler had called me to the hospital, and being angry was tiring. I just wanted to let the emotions out, to let them burn right through me and onto the people who deserved that rage.

  The walls of the estate loomed by the right side of the road. I stopped at the gate and waited while it whirred open. Damon stirred as I parked by the garage.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “We’re back. I thought you’d rather stay here for the night.”

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes blearily. His jaw clenched as he restrained a yawn. “Sounds good.”

  I undid my seatbelt, but then I stayed where I was. The shell of the car contained everything I was feeling right now. I had the sense that if I stepped out while my emotions were still churning like this, they’d somehow explode out into the open air.

  “What do you think I should do?” I said.

  Damon glanced over at me. “Probably get out and go to bed,” he said, but his eyes were serious. He knew I meant more than that.

  “You thought I was right to go after Master Courtland like I did. To fight back. ‘Burn them all down,’ isn’t that what you said when we first found out what the Frankfords were doing?”

  “Sounds like me,” he agreed. “Why? Do you have a plan for burning them down? Can I be there to strike the match?”

  “If I did, of course you could,” I said. “I just… I want to hurt them for what they did to you. For what they did to all of you. But I know it’s not because I think it’s a good strategy or that it’ll really fix anything in the bigger picture. It’ll just make me feel like the world’s a little more fair.” Make me feel a little less helpless.

  “Are you asking me for permission to go ballistic on their asses?” Damon asked. “I’m not sure I’m the person you should be checking with when it comes to moderation.”

  “That’s why I’m asking you.” I dropped my hands into my lap, but they squeezed into fists there. “It was your mom this time. It’s my fault—”