I just wanted to look at him for a moment. I just wanted to see him as he was, not as he had been. I knew every curve of his sixteen-year-old face. That boy was forever captured in the reconstruction I wore on my wrist, hidden among the charms of my platinum white-picket fence.
But the Declan before me was a man. Taller — well over six feet — and broader through the shoulders. His face was constructed out of sharp edges. A long-healed scar twisted from his right ear down the side of his neck.
“Wisteria,” he said, growling his irritation. But not touching me or batting my hands away.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, knowing it was absolutely the wrong thing to say.
Declan frowned, then turned his head, pulling his sunglasses away from my loose grip.
I stepped back, but only because I was worried he’d push me away. I was certain that I would completely shatter if he ever touched me in anger.
“You hold your magic oddly.” His accent was thicker, as if he’d spent time in his native Louisiana since I’d seen him. His tone was blunt, just on the edge of nasty. “Confined. To your eyes and the palms of your hands.”
I turned away without answering, reaching for my suitcase. He grabbed it before I could, then opened the passenger-side door for me as he carried it around the Jeep. I climbed in as he stowed it.
By the time he slid into the driver’s seat, I had my shields fully in place — magically and emotionally.
“Where are we going?” I asked, trying again for my well-rehearsed professional tone.
“Christ, Wisteria. You show up —”
I interrupted him before he could get heated, deliberately enunciating the question a second time. “Where are we going?”
Declan swore under his breath. Something in French, or his Creole version of it.
I didn’t understand the words, but I got the tone. I folded my hands in my lap as if supremely patient. Then I looked out the window.
It wasn’t snowing. The ground was bare, in fact, which was at complete odds with my childhood memories. Or at least the ones I hadn’t locked away and hoped to forget.
Declan started the Jeep. “Grey’s,” he said. “Fairchild House.”
Grey Fairchild, Declan and Jasmine’s father, was a distant cousin of mine in addition to being my uncle. When he’d married Dahlia, the least powerful of the Fairchild siblings, he’d brought money and business sense to the union, rather than powerful or unique magic. Though he hadn’t needed to adopt the family surname, as my father had.
“I tracked Jasmine there based off the last text messages on her phone, but I can’t get through the wards without blowing the entire place up. And yes, I did ring the bell.”
“Dahlia was in residence?”
Declan snorted. “What do you think?”
Dahlia, Jasmine’s mother, had adamantly refused to set eyes on Declan after Jasper revealed his existence, having gone to New Orleans and returned with the nine-year-old boy. Apparently, even nineteen years after discovering she had a stepson only two months older than her own daughter, she still blamed Declan for Grey’s indiscretion.
It had never been made clear to me if Grey had known of Declan’s existence, choosing to ignore his son even after his magic had proven a disappointment to his mother. Jules Benoit had been seeking a daughter — a female descendent who carried the ancestral power of the dark arts and necromancy, not a son who wielded witch magic. Declan had been left to the care of his elderly maternal grandfather as a result, who then died. Leaving Declan abandoned without home or money, and with no way to contact his mother or any other family members.
“Who knows you called me?” I asked.
“No one.”
“Who knows you have Jasmine’s phone?”
“Whoever answered the front-gate intercom at Grey’s but didn’t bother to let me in, and whoever they’ve told.”
“So they know Jasmine is missing.”
“They know I think she’s missing. But you know how much value the Fairchilds place on my opinions.”
“Did you keep the envelope the phone was sent in?”
“The box. Yes.” Declan’s tone was still tense. “From FedEx, like yours. No residual magic, and a tracing spell didn’t lead anywhere.”
I glanced over to him. Tracing spells were delicate magic, requiring precise and finely tuned casting. Declan’s magic was not attuned in any of those ways. At least it hadn’t been twelve years ago.
He twisted his hands on the steering wheel under my gaze, spitting out extra information. “A friend cast it before I left New Orleans.”
The word ‘friend,’ begrudgingly uttered as if it were necessary to shield the other caster’s identity from me, knifed through my belly. I knew Declan wasn’t a monk. In fact, based on the bits of information I picked up among Jasmine’s general but constant chatter, I was fairly certain he tore through sexual partners, leaving a wake of broken hearts across the years that separated us.
Still, his guarded tone spoke volumes about a witch ‘friend’ who’d tried to help him track Jasmine before he’d even thought to call me. That indicated a relationship of some depth. But Declan was free to love whomever he wished.
Just because I was incapable of doing so had no bearing on the situation.
I fiercely held on to my cool facade, turning my gaze back to the road before us. “We should compare the packaging.”
“Already done,” Declan said. “Both were prepaid. No way to tell who dropped them off, at least by any means at my disposal. We could try to track down the PO box, but tracking Jasmine’s movements might be quicker.”
My stomach soured, though I’d already suspected that the post office box wasn’t a lead either of us would be able to take terribly far. I wasn’t a trained investigator. I had no skill in magical or mundane means of tracing or tracking, and if Declan had ever managed to focus his magic enough to take up that line of work, Jasmine never mentioned it. Investigation was her forte.
The sky was dark blue, slowly deepening to black. Neither the stars nor the moon had made an appearance yet. Streets, sidewalks, and front yards slipped by on either side of us. Again, I saw no evidence of snow.
I almost opened my mouth to make some comment about the unusual weather, but then decided that Declan wasn’t likely to lower himself to chatting benignly with me.
From the private airfield, it was a fifteen-minute drive through a mostly residential area to Fairchild House, where Grey and Dahlia had resided for as long as I’d known them. Their estate shared a property line with Fairchild Place, my parents’ residence, with both properties occupying five acres in the center of Litchfield. My Aunt Rose resided fifteen minutes to the south, while Fairchild Manor — Jasper’s residence, assuming he was still there — was fifteen minutes to the north.
The Fairchild coven owned large swaths of land throughout the state, most of it acquired centuries before and now operated through various corporations and different branches of the family. The town of Litchfield had been founded in the early seventeen hundreds and was set in a landscape of rolling New England hills and woodlands across which early American architecture was predominant.
“What did you mean when you said the phone might be cloned?” I asked.
“That they might have copied Jasmine’s phone so they could monitor it,” Declan said. “Send it to me, then track my response through it.”
“But you used it to call me.”
He glanced over at me briefly, quickly returning his gaze to the road. “I didn’t know if you’d answer if you knew it was me.”
I wasn’t certain how to respond, because I had no idea what I would have done if his name had appeared on my phone.
Declan tersely redirected the conversation. “What’s the connection to the Conclave?”
“A case Jasmine and I were working on together in October.”
“With the necromancer and her son?”
I nodded, once more thinking back to that night in the graveyard an
d the deals that had been cemented there. Jasmine must have filled Declan in on the details of the investigation. “I have no idea how that would come back at us, though. Especially with you involved.”
“We were the only two mailing addresses in Jasmine’s phone.”
I glanced over to Declan, but he kept his gaze glued to the road. He’d taken off his sunglasses at some point, as if wearing them earlier had been an extra layer of protection from me. But they were too dark to be practical while driving.
I thought about mentioning the Conclave contract stuffed into my bag, sitting on the floor now beneath my legs. Except Declan wouldn’t need to ask why the packages containing the phone and Jasmine’s necklace had been addressed to the Conclave if he knew of that tenuous possible connection through Kett and me to Jasmine’s disappearance.
And I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared to tell him that Jasper wanted to be a vampire. That if Kett didn’t select our uncle, either Declan or I were next in line to be turned into an immortal, invulnerable, blood-crazed monster. Sitting barely a foot-and-a-half from him for the first time in over a decade, I just couldn’t admit that a vampire saw something in me. Something that made offering me eternity by his side a possibility.
Of course, Declan could have been hiding all that from me as well. I had no way of knowing whether Kett had presented him with the contract months ago.
“Did you know Jasmine was in New York?” I continued the conversation as if I hadn’t just been sitting silently with too many thoughts whirling around in my head.
He nodded. “On a case.”
“Then she came … here?” I subbed the word ‘here’ for ‘home’ at the last minute. This place wasn’t home to any of us anymore.
“Apparently.”
“She was supposed to come to me this weekend, for a late Christmas.”
“I know.”
Silence fell between us again. I wondered if his ‘friend,’ the witch who had cast the tracking spell, had also spent Christmas with Declan and Jasmine. Then I refocused on our surroundings, not allowing myself to wonder any further. Large hedges and gated driveways slipped by my window. The area was starting to look familiar, which made me realize that Declan was taking the longer route into the neighborhood of Litchfield’s larger estates. Avoiding driving past my parents’ property.
The Fairchild siblings — Violet, Dahlia, Rose, and Jasper — lived in fairly close proximity, but they had never been particularly interested in seeing each other outside of coven business. At least that had always been my impression. But I had no idea how that dynamic had shifted after Jasmine, Declan, and I tore through their carefully projected facade.
My mother, Violet, was the eldest of the siblings, and a potion master. Her salves and draughts — the regulated ones, at least — were exceedingly sought after and commanded a hefty price. Not that the Fairchilds needed the extra income.
Rose, the healer, born second, sat on the Convocation. Dahlia, Jasmine’s mother, was proficient at charms and wards. And Jasper was the youngest and the most powerful. He commanded the coven’s magic, controlling the blood ties that bound us together. As a teenager, I had believed there was no spell he couldn’t cast. No assault he couldn’t withstand.
Until we three had turned on him.
Twelve years later, I had no idea what had become of his magical capacity, except that he apparently retained a talent for true naming, the ability to tie another person to a spell without their knowledge or permission — or to a contract, in the case of Declan, Jasmine, me, and presumably every other member of the Fairchild family.
I toyed with the platinum charm bracelet on my right wrist, finding a touch of comfort there — both in the reconstructions I carried of Declan and Jasmine, and in the protective magic that Jade had imbued within the bracelet. Unfortunately, I had no idea whether the magic I’d successfully wielded against a fledgling vampire was going to be any help against the elder witches I was about to confront.
We pulled up to the front gates of Fairchild House and stopped. The estate was the smallest of the properties in terms of acreage, but it might have been the most richly appointed. The narrow grass frontage and sidewalks were edged by a low stone wall that was topped by a tall wrought-iron fence. The imposing Georgian mansion beyond was symmetrically arranged around its crowned and corniced front entrance. It stood at the far end of a long, perfectly straight drive lined by ornate lampposts whose white globes shone in the evening light.
“They’ve rebricked the driveway,” I said.
“New security since the last time you were here, as well,” Declan said. “Cameras.” He pointed to the top of the gates. “Motion sensors.”
“That’s awfully mundane of them.”
“Jasmine’s work. Trying to prove her worthiness. As always.”
I didn’t answer. I knew that the security system couldn’t stop me from entering the grounds. Even with the electronics warded by Jasmine, I could easily short-circuit all of it with my magic. But I needed a closer look at the wards.
Declan pulled ahead but didn’t bother to turn into the driveway, rolling the Jeep to a stop a few feet away from the gates. Shifting my gaze out the side window to eye the wrought-iron fencing, I laid my right hand on the door handle, gathering my bag in my left.
“I’ve missed you too,” Declan whispered.
I stilled, remaining turned away from him. Though it was a sentiment I’d offered earlier, I wasn’t certain how to respond now that he’d reciprocated. I wasn’t certain how to broach everything that needed to be said with my next breath.
He opened his door and stepped out of the vehicle, breaking the moment. I followed without trying to recapture it.
We needed to find Jasmine. If we were lucky, she’d be in the house and completely unaware that we thought she was missing. Dahlia was more than capable of vindictively withholding that information, especially from her husband’s illegitimate child.
But even as my mind framed that possibility, I knew it wasn’t at all logical. Jasmine wouldn’t have gone this long without checking in with one or both of us, with or without her phone.
Still, it was each tiny glimpse of hope that would keep me moving forward, preventing me from simply crumpling into a heap of despair. So logically or not, I would cling to that hope while searching for other possibilities, other clues. I would do that over and over, and the trail would lead to Jasmine in the end.
Chapter 3
Buttoning up my long wool coat after carefully rearranging my lace scarf, I stood before the high gate with Declan just behind my left shoulder. It had actually been cooler in Seattle, which didn’t line up at all with my expectations — but which also wasn’t remotely relevant to our current situation.
Fairchild House, however, looked exactly as I remembered it. Winter-bare maple trees lined the straight drive up to the roundabout entrance of the stone mansion. Ablaze with light, the stately six-bedroom house looked utterly inviting. It was the residents who were off-putting. The white window trims and shutters stood out in the evening light as though newly painted. Smoke curled from three of the house’s six chimneys.
I raised my hand, reaching toward the buzzer attached to the stone pillar on the right side of the gate. But then I hesitated.
“They didn’t even answer you?” I asked without looking away from the house. “When you buzzed earlier?”
“They listened.”
I pushed back the right sleeve of my coat, flicking my wrist a few times so that my bracelet settled across the back of my hand.
“How many times have you been here?”
“Jasmine used to sneak me in on our holiday breaks.”
“Otherwise you stayed at Fairchild Manor? With Jasper? Or did you go to Rose’s?”
Declan shrugged instead of answering.
I raised my right hand, palm facing the invisible wall of ward magic that stood about two inches away from the wrought-iron gate. Declan wouldn’t be tuned to his stepmother’s wards.
In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that Dahlia had added extra layers of magic to her protection spells with the specific intent of keeping Declan from ever setting foot in her home.
My palm met with resistance. I pressed against the magic. It blocked my advancement, though it didn’t try to grab or expel me.
“Are you going to knock?” Declan asked, sounding mildly amused.
“I am.”
I gathered my right hand into a fist, channeling all my anger and frustration into the bracelet-turned-magical-artifact on my wrist. Though it had been years since I’d deliberately wielded my magic in any way other than creating reconstructions — except when tussling with a fledgling vampire — it was the perfect time and venue for a test of whether or not I could wield the magic contained within the platinum trinket willfully.
Perhaps it wasn’t Dahlia and Grey’s fault that I was in Connecticut. They might have known that Jasmine was safe and sound, but were simply too mired in the past to share that information with Declan, causing him to leap to conclusions. Perhaps it was someone else altogether who was playing with us.
Or perhaps this was just the first step toward a confrontation with Jasper that I had always known was coming.
But none of those possibilities would hold me back. I had chosen to remove myself from the Fairchild sphere of influence, but not out of fear for myself.
I’d left to protect Declan and Jasmine.
Our elders were contemptuous, power-hungry snobs, willing to feign ignorance of the dark deeds that had shaped our childhoods because it suited them to do so. Jasmine might have been willing to set that aside in order to maintain a relationship with her parents and our Aunt Rose. But I wasn’t.
Not bothering with any of the niceties that were expected of a witch requesting an audience with an elder of her coven, I punched the ward blocking our entrance with the magic I’d gathered into my fist. Once, twice, three times, I assaulted Dahlia’s carefully constructed shields.
Ripples of blue gossamer spread outward from each blow, reverberating across the length and breadth of the magical barrier standing between me and the answers I sought.
Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2) Page 4