Excepting Jasmine, Rose was the closest person either of us had to a caring family member.
My father, Slate, strode into the foyer. He was dressed in casual pants and an open-collared blue pinstriped dress shirt. After glancing my mother’s way with a frown, he crossed to greet me. “My girl!”
I instinctively thrust my hand forward, palm facing his chest.
He faltered, looking momentarily pained.
Rose clucked her tongue, but she didn’t comment on my behavior.
Dahlia and Grey were hovering in the archway to the drawing room.
Heat flooded my cheeks as embarrassment flushed through my system. And all of a sudden, I felt childish and unsure. Ungrateful, spoiled, and disrespectful. It was an ingrained reaction to being faced with my family, clashing now with my sense of self, my sense of morality. Everything felt tangled and tight within my chest.
I needed to not be there. I needed to be anywhere else except surrounded by my family.
“We were just leaving.” Declan’s voice was a low, threatening growl. “But Violet appears to be blocking the door.”
“We just wanted a word,” Rose said. Her tone was thin and needy. “We … we believe this could be an opportunity —”
“Jasmine is missing,” I said. I grabbed hold of that reality, using it to anchor myself within the present.
“Oh, really.” Dahlia sighed dramatically. “Of all the games —”
“It’s time for you to return to us, Wisteria,” my mother said, though she didn’t sound terribly pleased at the prospect.
“Yes,” Rose said, patting my arm. “Balance must be restored for the coven to —”
Declan’s laugh cut Rose off midsentence. His humorless outburst was riddled with disbelief and edged in anger.
“You can leave any time you wish,” Dahlia snarled at her stepson. “In fact, Wisteria knows better than to bring you here. Or to be seen with you at all. Evidently, twelve years is too long for a prissy princess to keep her word.”
Silence fell across the foyer. I could actually hear a clock ticking somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t visualize one within my memory of the house. I’d been avoiding this moment, this inevitable confrontation, since the day I left Litchfield. But with Declan and I returning, I should have expected it.
Declan slowly and deliberately turned to face me. His leather coat brushed my leg.
I met his steady, searing gaze. He was no longer the boy I’d dallied with by the lake. He was no longer the broken boy I’d left in the hospital.
“What does she mean?” Declan asked. Barely suppressed thunder rolled through his words. Sparks of his magic rained down from his clenched hands.
I didn’t answer him. The situation was about to spin out of control, and I was dreadfully certain that Declan and I couldn’t fight our way past four Fairchilds at the height of their powers.
“It was always going to come to this,” I murmured.
“What does she mean?” Declan asked again, enunciating each word pointedly.
“Absolutely nothing, Declan,” Rose said gently. “Tempers are high.”
“Oh, please, Rose,” my mother said. “Why do you insist on treating them like idiot children? They never were such creatures. Well, Wisteria wasn’t. Dahlia is simply reiterating what you already know. After what you did to our brother, Jasper, putting him in that godawful wheelchair, you are no longer welcome in our homes. Wisteria was to never have any contact with you. That was how she bargained for your life, Declan. How did you think you walked away unscathed twelve years ago?”
“We just didn’t think you’d leave too, Wisteria,” my father said. “We never wanted to lose you.”
“After I put Jasper in the wheelchair,” Declan said, speaking slowly as if he was piecing something together while glancing around at all the elders in the room, “you were all scared of me. That’s why there was never any retribution other than sending me away to school.”
Dahlia started to snarl something, but Grey placed a cautioning hand on her arm.
Declan looked at each of them again, finally locking his gaze to Rose’s over my head until our aunt guiltily looked away.
Then he laughed harshly, as if coming to some realization that pained him. “If I could put Jasper down at sixteen, just think what I could do to all of you now.”
As if on cue, the four elders stepped slightly away from each other, fanning across two sides of the foyer.
That strategic move made the stairs at our back a defensive nightmare. If spells started flying, we’d have to shove Rose down or drag her with us into the parlor.
I glanced at Declan. He was smiling so grimly that the expression was almost fiendish. Everyone surrounding him was blond and perfectly poised. Even visually, he was an outsider. A malignancy that demanded to be removed.
“If we fight them, we’ll never find Jasmine,” I whispered. “Even if we win, we won’t walk away unharmed. What will her kidnappers do? Wait around while we heal?”
“Kidnappers?” Dahlia scoffed. “She’s off screwing some sorcerer or shapeshifter.”
The sconce nearest to her exploded, raining glass shards across the marble floor.
All eyes turned to Declan, their collective glare redoubled.
He shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”
One by one, all the elders looked at me. Uneasy frowns furrowed their brows.
“We were just heading to a hotel to follow up on a lead,” I said stiffly. “But perhaps we should just cut through the pretense and head straight to the manor.”
“Hotel?” Grey echoed.
“Jasmine wasn’t staying in a hotel,” Dahlia said.
“Jasper isn’t at the manor …” Rose’s whisper cut through all the other posturing.
My knees went weak at her words.
“Excuse me?” Declan snarled. “Where else would he be?”
“He winters at one of the family properties,” Violet said smugly. “For the heat. Because of what you did.”
Slate glanced at Violet, frowning. “He was just here —”
“For the holidays,” Violet snapped. “What does that have to do with anything?”
My father’s frown deepened. “Under the circumstances, with Jasmine missing —”
“Jasmine isn’t missing,” Dahlia said. “This is ridiculously contrived. Another bid for attention by Miss Too-Good-to-be-a-Fairchild.” She waved in my direction. “Jasmine goes weeks without checking in.”
“With you, maybe,” Declan said.
I didn’t respond. Much to my own surprise, I was relieved rather than scared. If Jasper wasn’t in town, then his connection to Jasmine being missing was tenuous, and I might actually get out of Connecticut without facing him.
Apparently, I was a coward after all.
I grabbed my coat off the banister, folding it over my left arm and leaving my right hand and bracelet exposed. Then I walked slowly but deliberately for the door. Declan fell into step behind me.
My mother crossed her arms, defiantly cocking her hip into my path.
As I drew closer, I locked my gaze to hers. “That day in the hospital, when I discovered that you all knew … that you knew everything he’d ever done to us and that you accepted it without question. That you thought it was simply the proper way of training us, the way it had always been done.”
“That’s not true,” my father said to my left.
“Shut up, Slate,” Declan snarled.
“That was the day you ceased to exist for me,” I said. My voice was steady, though my hands were shaking. “The day I realized you never were my mother. My protector. That you were incapable of the love that requires, and that you would never be capable of holding me in your heart above all else.”
My mother’s expression became questioning, almost troubled. “It can’t have been that bad.”
“Move aside.”
“It can’t have been,” she said, glancing over my shoulder to my father for support. “And if it was, you never
made it clear. You never —”
“Move aside or I’ll move you, Violet.” I was trembling suddenly, but not with fear. I was infused with anger and frustration desperately seeking an outlet.
The stained-glassed sidelights on either side of the door cracked.
“This is insane,” Grey said from somewhere behind me. “This can’t continue.”
My mother reached for me, then. As if she might be able to hug me, hold me, and siphon all my pain away.
Either that or she was about to poison me.
My father — his face stricken with concern — grabbed her upper arm and physically dragged her away from me.
I reached for the ornate knob, opening the door and stepping through it without another word.
Declan matched me step for step down the long driveway, his leather jacket billowing out like a protective sail behind us. Even without my coat on, the starlit night was oddly balmy. Or perhaps I was simply overheated.
“They’re still in the doorway,” he murmured. “Watching us.”
I didn’t answer. The gate swung open silently before us, remotely triggered. As I crossed onto the sidewalk, the property’s wards slid across my skin, allowing me passage without resistance. I kept my mind carefully blank, thinking about nothing other than getting away unscathed. Well, getting Declan away unscathed. Poised for something more … ready to fight if necessary.
But they let us walk away with the final word. An action unheard of among the Fairchilds, except for Jasper or me. My uncle and I were the only ones who were patient enough to seek revenge rather than immediate retribution.
Declan quickened his step, crossing in front of me to open the passenger door of the Jeep. I stiffly slipped my coat on, then climbed in without comment.
He jogged around to the driver’s side, climbing in and starting the vehicle at the same time. Then he cranked the heater, sending an initial blast of chilled air throughout the interior. I gathered the lapels of my coat tightly at my neck, waiting for the engine to warm up and the heat to kick in.
I could feel Declan looking at me. I gazed resolutely out the windshield, not wanting to talk. Just needing to stuff my damaged soul back inside of me. I had to shove it down deep to continue functioning. I wasn’t ready to discuss anything. I wasn’t certain I ever would be.
He chuckled quietly. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to be backed by you. By your magic. Though you hold it too tightly now. That’s why it keeps getting away from you.”
“It doesn’t keep getting away from me,” I said waspishly.
Declan snorted, then checked his mirrors and pulled the Jeep away from the curb. “Put on your seatbelt.”
I obeyed him wordlessly. But my brain was in overdrive as the interior of the Jeep started to warm. What if I’d missed some obvious clue because I was so obsessed with Jasper’s villainy? Some clue that might have led us to Jasmine immediately, and let us avoid the fruitless confrontation with our parents?
“We could have taken them,” he said. “Even without Jasmine.”
“We are what he made us,” I murmured, unable to check the pain threaded through my words.
“That always bothered you more than it did me.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer.
It wasn’t altruism that had sent Jasper to New Orleans, looking for Declan the summer before we all turned ten and started our training. No, our uncle had a long-term plan. A plan that was ruined when Declan and I inadvertently forged a greater connection. Then we turned what he’d created against him when he tried to take steps to put us in check. Steps that would have cost Jasmine her life.
The power of three, Jasper had called it. And Declan hadn’t cared that he was being used, because he’d been abandoned and was living on the street. Because Jasper — or rather the brownie, Bluebell — fed and housed us. Because Jasper had given him Jasmine and me when he’d had no one.
“But what I’d really like to know,” Declan said, ignoring my silence, “is why they think it was me who took Jasper down.” His voice was silky smooth, deceptively sweet.
I glanced at him. He met my gaze briefly, then looked back at the road.
The headlights of the Jeep cut through the night as we drove past gated estate after gated estate. I leaned back in the seat, allowing the blasting heat to melt the remnants of all my fear and frustration away.
Declan didn’t press me further, which was good because I suddenly realized I was exhausted. The dashboard clock read 8:37 p.m.
“What did they mean the coven was unbalanced?” I murmured, feeling myself drifting while I sifted through the conversation we’d just been subjected to in my head.
“Do you doubt it?”
“Yes,” I said, giving in and closing my eyes. “Why now? They’ve been without the three of us for over twelve years. Why would it be unbalanced now?”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“No. Why would you?”
“You aren’t going to answer my question, then?”
“You already know the answer, Bubba.” I whispered his nickname, speaking to the version of him that I still held in my heart even after all the years that had passed. Even after all the loathing he’d leveled my way for the last hour and a half.
He didn’t respond.
And I fell asleep like that, comforted by the heat and the moving vehicle. Momentarily safe in Declan’s presence.
I actually napped for the fifteen minutes it took to drive to the hotel we’d tracked Jasmine to by way of her Visa statement. Dealing with my family was apparently exhausting. But no matter how Declan felt about me, I knew I could trust him without question.
Feeling refreshed and alert, I woke as Declan turned off the Jeep. He’d parked in the far corner of an exterior parking lot, wedged between a hulking Hummer and some low shrubbery that hedged the property. The nose of the vehicle faced the brightly lit portico entrance of a sleek luxury hotel.
The Fairhaven Hotel was shiny and new, its tinted windows appearing almost black in the dark and rising upward for at least fifteen storeys. The lower levels were set aglow by golden-tinted spotlights angled up from the landscaping and down from the lower roofline. The site was brashly modern, as if New York had bled over the state border and planted an outpost. Even without being sure of our exact location, I could see how the hotel completely clashed with the general early-American feel of the town around it.
“It’s very … glossy,” I said. “For Litchfield.”
Declan folded his arms across his chest. “Glossy is what Grey does best.”
“Along with dragging the Fairchilds into the twenty-first century.”
Declan snorted. Then a comfortable silence fell between us as we sat in the warm, dark interior of the Jeep, watching the entrance as a small number of vehicles came and went from the parking lot.
At the center of the ground floor, two uniformed doormen chatted just inside the automatic glassed entrance doors, greeting guests as they entered or exited. The lobby stretched beyond the front doors, extending back through the hotel with a seating area and a fireplace in the middle. The reception desk and the elevators were likely farther along, but I couldn’t see them from our vantage point. A restaurant occupied the ground floor nearest to us, while the opposite front corner appeared to be devoted to an expansive lounge.
I stepped out of the Jeep, pausing to button up my coat. Declan also exited, remotely triggering the locks.
It was colder, finally, and the cool air felt like an assault to the exposed skin of my face and hands. Regardless of the legendary Seattle rain — and with the exception of the cold snap the city was currently experiencing — years spent mostly on the West Coast had made me a fan of milder weather. But now the chill invigorated me. I quickly stepped across the parking lot to the sidewalk that ran the length of the restaurant, moving toward the hotel entrance.
As I passed, I scanned the candlelit tables beyond the lightly tinted windows for familiar faces. I didn’t expe
ct to see Jasmine dining on lobster and sipping champagne, but being thorough kept me focused on the task — and not thinking about Declan following me like a dark guardian shadow.
We made a sharp visual contrast. Unshaven and darker-skinned, he would have pulled people’s attention even without his ankle-length black leather coat. Whereas I most likely looked as if I’d just dashed out for a brisk after-dinner stroll.
I strode through the sliding doors into the front lobby, offering the doormen a polite smile. Then I watched their courteous expressions turn into frowns as they took in Declan behind me.
I continued through the lobby, taking in the decor of gold and black. I passed the entrance to the fairly busy upscale lounge, then the empty seating area arranged around a sleek, black-tiled gas fireplace. Nearing the registration desk, I offered the clerk the same smile I’d offered at the door. She immediately stepped forward.
“I’d like to place a call to Jasmine Fairchild,” I said, channeling all the Fairchild sense of entitlement that I could. “She’s expecting me.”
“Of course,” the clerk said amicably. Her fingers danced over the keyboard of her desktop computer. “If you will just step over to the courtesy phone …” She gestured toward a mirrored sideboard to my right.
“Thank you,” I said, already turning away. As I neared, the courtesy phone rang. I picked it up.
Declan settled his shoulder against the wall to my left, facing the front doors and the entrance to the ritzy lounge.
“I’ll put you through,” the clerk’s voice said in my ear.
I didn’t bother thanking her a second time. The line went quiet.
“You really think she’s just lounging around in a hotel, eating bonbons while someone rips off her phone and necklace?” Declan’s voice dripped with sarcasm while he continued to scan the area behind me.
“I thought I might have been able to see the screen when the clerk opened the guest file,” I said. “Or that if she asks me to leave a message, she lets the room number slip.”
The phone on the other end started to ring.
“And,” I continued pointedly, “we now know Jasmine hasn’t checked out.”
Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2) Page 7