Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  So there were two options. Either Yale was smarter than he’d appeared so far, and had used Connecticut as a location to draw Jasmine’s attention. Because he’d somehow put together that she was a Fairchild witch who might be testy about vampires in witch territory, and who would therefore come to investigate. And this was all about setting up Kett.

  Or Jasmine’s kidnapping was somehow tied to the Fairchilds. And since Rose had no knowledge of the presence of the vampires in Litchfield, it might still be tied to our Uncle Jasper.

  Although Yale might keep his brood in ignorance of the formalities of the Adept world, a vampire strong enough to make four children — including Nigel — and clever enough to stay off the executioner of the Conclave’s radar while doing so was definitely not a moron.

  But I wasn’t interested in playing Yale’s games, sitting around and waiting to be told where to go. I might not be able to help with the technical side of the investigation, but I had all the time before sunset to look for more clues. And no matter what Kett turned up or Declan and Rose discussed, I knew where I had to go next.

  The connection to Connecticut was too obvious to not be fully explored.

  To that end, while Kett had his associates looking for patterns hidden among the vampire’s credit-card charges and Rose had the distasteful task of gathering the coven, I was going to Fairchild Manor, whether my uncle was in residence or not. It might have just been all my ingrained instincts that made me suspect him, but I needed to know if Jasper was involved. If he was, perhaps I’d be lucky enough to reconstruct a clue that would lead us to the vampires before they expected us. And if not, we’d move on to the next location and the next clue, until we’d either exhausted the trail or the sun had set.

  I wasn’t going to gamble on Jasmine still being alive after another day in the custody of the vampires. But I also wasn’t going to risk her getting killed in a full-scale battle of witches versus vampires. Not if I could do anything about it.

  Kett might have declared himself my protector, but that protection wouldn’t necessarily hold for Jasmine. Or even for Declan. And I wasn’t actually certain that even Kett could protect all three of us from four other vampires at the same time.

  I also wasn’t certain — even though Kett was the executioner of the Conclave — that he would side with witches over vampires if that choice ever needed to be made. Especially if my uncle was somehow involved, because that would place Jasmine’s kidnapping firmly under the purview of both the Fairchild coven and the Convocation. I had no idea what the rules guiding the executioner’s conduct were, or what rules Yale and his offspring would have to break in order to deserve the judgement Kett’s title suggested.

  I gathered the quilted duvet underneath my chin, suddenly terribly cold. Chilled through, as if I’d never truly be warm ever again.

  Jasmine was missing, and I wasn’t certain it was remotely within my power to get her back alive. Even if I did somehow manage to get her away from the vampires unscathed, the path that stretched out before me led inextricably to Kett. The vampire might believe he was giving me a choice — a choice he’d never had. But if it came down to Jasper or me, I couldn’t let my uncle take the power Kett offered.

  Because that power in my uncle’s hands would destroy everyone I loved. But becoming a vampire myself would only cost my mortal soul. And I would trade more than that for Jasmine and Declan any day or night.

  Exhaustion took hold of my mind, and as I gave into it, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps vampires didn’t know they were so dreadfully cold. So I might have been wrong about never feeling warm again.

  Unfortunately, though, I wasn’t wrong about where the next steps in the investigation were going to take me.

  “Jasper,” I whispered, trying and failing to own his name while the dawning of the day brightened my windows. I’d forgotten to pull the curtains.

  “Jasper,” I whispered again, putting more strength into the evocation and wishing that I could call power forth with just his name. But that talent didn’t lie within any of my current abilities, or the abilities I’d abandoned.

  “Jasmine,” I whispered, closing my eyes against the brightening room. I could feel the faint weight of the chain around my neck, and — if I allowed it — the tiny glimmers of magic in the reconstructions resting over my heart.

  “I’m coming for you, Jasmine,” I said, bidding the dawn to whisper the words in my cousin’s ear.

  Then I slept.

  Chapter 8

  I could smell the cinnamon buns even before I descended the stairs. Apparently, Rose had brought in breakfast. Forgoing the kitchen, I crossed the foyer into the dining room beside the front drawing room, where a breakfast buffet had been laid on the tall sideboard. Rose was still treating us as guests instead of family, which I knew shouldn’t have irked me as much as it did. I’d asked for professional courtesy, after all.

  My aunt, dressed head to toe in pink silk and wool, was sitting two chairs from the head of the dark oak table that sliced through the center of the long, narrow room. Declan, in a black T-shirt and jeans, was across from her, though one seat closer to the head of the table.

  Rose looked up as I entered, offering me a tentative smile.

  “Good morning,” I said, crossing to the sideboard and flipping the lid on a carafe of coffee. I leaned over, eagerly inviting the heavy, slightly burnt aroma to fill my senses.

  “Good morning, darling,” Rose said, sounding utterly delighted. My aunt had a way of putting all confrontation behind her as quickly as possible, whether or not an issue had actually been resolved.

  Declan grunted a greeting, then flipped a page of the newspaper he was holding like it might have been a barrier between him and Rose.

  He’d cleared his plate. Rose was nibbling on toast spread with red berry jam.

  The dining table was set with charger plates, coffee mugs, and utensils. I selected a small white china bowl from a stack on the sideboard and served myself some fruit salad, completely intending to come back for a double helping of the scalloped potatoes I’d spotted in one of the warmers.

  “We need to go to the manor,” Declan said, not looking up from his newspaper. “I’m not waiting around to hear back from some vampire. Whether or not he’s in town doesn’t mean he isn’t involved.”

  Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one whose thoughts had strayed to Jasper the previous night.

  “I know,” I said as I picked up the carafe of coffee, then carried it and my fruit salad to the seat across from Declan. I chose to sit beside Rose, leaving the head of the table where Jasper would have sat during a full family gathering vacant.

  Rose glanced back and forth between Declan and me. “I haven’t collected much information on the vampires. Or contacted some of the out-of-town coven members yet. Give me a few more hours.”

  Declan closed the paper. Folding it and tossing it on the table, he reached for his half-full coffee mug and settled back in his chair, staring steadily at our aunt.

  He looked utterly out of place surrounded by fine china and delicate furniture. And he wasn’t actually blood related to anyone in the dining room. For some reason, both observations brought a smile to my face. Declan wasn’t a Fairchild.

  Rose dropped his gaze, glancing over at me instead.

  I carefully placed my bowl of fruit salad on the charger plate set before me. Then I made a show of pouring coffee into the china mug beside it.

  “You shouldn’t go out without the vampire,” Rose said. “This is his issue, after all.”

  “He walks in the daylight,” I said.

  “Yes. I see.” Rose sounded flustered, but was trying to act as if a vampire not being dead to the world while the sun was up wasn’t dreadful news. “Of course.”

  Declan set his emptied mug on its saucer, then let his hand settle on the table next to it. He tapped his fingers one at a time as if counting down — or perhaps attempting to control his temper.

  I leaned across the
table, topping up his mug before sitting down. He nodded thanks, still not looking away from Rose.

  “Cream?”

  “I take it black,” he said, not unkindly.

  I set the carafe on the stretch of linen-swathed table between us, sitting down to sip the hot, dark brew.

  “Is he at the manor?” Declan asked Rose, pointedly.

  She played with the sterling silver teaspoon on the edge of her saucer.

  I speared a piece of cantaloupe out of my bowl of fruit and chewed it slowly, savoring the sweet juice across my tongue.

  “Yes. I imagine … I assumed he’d selected a room in the basement, but now that Wisteria has indicated —”

  “Not the vampire, Rose.” Declan kept his tone even, but he wasn’t as capable as a true-blood Fairchild was of hiding his anger and frustration.

  Even Rose’s outward fretfulness was something of a pretense. Not that she wasn’t worried about what Declan and I were capable of, but she was at least choosing to let us see her concern.

  “Is he in residence, Rose? Were you just covering for him last night at Grey and Dahlia’s?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with your uncle,” my aunt finally said. “This is obviously the vampire’s doing, and Jasmine’s.”

  Declan snorted, crossed his arms, and looked at me.

  I took a measured sip of my coffee, then set down my mug. China clicked on china, intensifying the tension in the dining room.

  “Three vampires are roaming Fairchild territory,” I said, keeping my tone politely crisp. “Perhaps four. Jasmine tracked them here.”

  “Perhaps they followed her home,” Rose said. “That would be a far more logical assumption.”

  Declan snorted again.

  “The chance that they’re here without permission is exceedingly low. And if you didn’t give that permission as acting head of the coven, who did?”

  “It’s a simple thing to verify, Rose,” Declan said. “Is he or has he recently been in residence or not?”

  My aunt lifted her chin. “No. But I … I haven’t heard from him this morning.”

  “I wasn’t aware that he was so … mobile,” I said, spearing a sliced strawberry with my perfectly balanced fork. “That the coven permitted him any time in which to answer a summons.”

  “I tried to talk to you last night, Wisteria,” Rose said, laying her hand on my arm. “It’s time to put all this behind you. The coven is weakened without —”

  Declan stood abruptly, hitting the edge of the table hard enough to slop my coffee.

  Rose snapped her mouth closed on the rest of her plea.

  Casually removing my aunt’s hand from my arm by lifting it, I ate the strawberry.

  Declan tossed his cloth napkin on the table, downed his hot coffee in one gulp, then slammed the empty cup into its saucer and strode from the room.

  “We’ll be heading to Fairchild Manor after breakfast,” I said, keeping my tone even despite the way my heart rate ramped up at my own pronouncement.

  “He’s … he’s on the island … for his monthly treatment,” Rose said, expanding on what my mother had said last night.

  The island. She most likely meant the property in Barbados. I glanced over at her, but she was avoiding my gaze.

  “So he comes and goes as he wishes,” I whispered.

  My fruit dish cracked. The white bone china split in half and collapsed to either side, the remainder of my fruit salad spilling out over the charger plate. Evidently, I didn’t have myself as under control as I thought. Rose and I both stared at the ruined bowl.

  She swallowed. “Please … it was previously arranged. I’m not strong enough to —”

  Declan strode back into the dining room, practically boiling with magic. He placed his hands on the table, leaning across it and leveling his gaze with Rose’s. “If I find out that this is you,” he said. “If I find out that any of you has arranged for Jasmine to be snatched in order to get Wisteria back here …”

  The promise of utter destruction was laced through every word, but my heart thumped in my chest for a completely different reason.

  “Then what?” Rose snapped, shifting back to rise from her chair — and transforming from a simple healer to the head of the Fairchild coven with that single movement. “You’ll bring the house down on me, Declan? Destroy the only family you’ve ever had, flawed as it might be?”

  A terrible fierce smile stretched across Declan’s face. “Don’t allow your snobbery and your misplaced bravado to get away on you, Rose. I’d rather destroy the only family I’ve ever had than allow everything good and true in that family to be drained away.”

  “How dare you threaten me across my own dining room table,” Rose said. “I will not —”

  “He didn’t mean you,” I said, reaching for the carafe of coffee and topping up my mug.

  Rose frowned.

  Declan’s nasty smile ebbed into a sneer.

  “You’ll make more phone calls, then?” I asked. “Whether or not he is in residence, I’d like to depart immediately after breakfast.”

  “Of course,” Rose said stiffly. Then she turned to cross toward the foyer.

  “And, Rose …” I called after her.

  My aunt paused in the doorway, half turning back to me.

  “If Jasper is in any way involved with Jasmine’s disappearance …” — I waved my hand offishly — “… what Declan said holds. There’s no point, you see. Jasper has already tried to take Jasmine from us once. If he manages to kill her this time, we won’t survive it. One way or the other.”

  Rose closed her eyes, pained.

  I slid my chair back and stood, crossing to the sideboard and serving myself a generous helping of scalloped potatoes from the silver warming dish. “It’s the blood connection, of course,” I said, continuing as if we were having a casual conversation. “And being raised together under great duress. But it’s also what he did to us. How he tied us together. Bound us in power and despair.” Then I lifted my gaze to meet Declan’s. “And pleasure, unwillingly forced upon us —”

  “Wisteria …” Rose said, chastising me.

  “Oh, I know.” I added two pieces of perfectly crisp bacon to my plate. “Not a proper topic for the breakfast table. And obviously, you still don’t believe me. Or perhaps you just still can’t believe that your brother would be capable of molesting —”

  “Please. Don’t.”

  Having made my point, I quietly added a mound of scrambled eggs to my plate. Then I carefully closed all the warming dishes and returned to the table.

  Rose hadn’t moved from the doorway.

  Declan was still watching her, not me.

  I smoothed my napkin over my lap, picking up my fork. “You know, it didn’t occur to me at the time, when I was desperate to save Declan and Jasmine from the coven’s wrath, then quickly realized I was going to have to … mitigate the circumstances. But the Fairchild coven could have had the truth, effortlessly. A powerful reader would have shown you all our thoughts. And Jasper’s deeds from his own perspective, of course. A reconstruction could have been collected —”

  “Multiple reconstructions,” Declan said. Still standing, he reached across the table to steal one of my pieces of bacon. “Though who could have been commissioned to collect them without bias?”

  Rose didn’t respond to either of us.

  I took a bite of the scalloped potatoes. They were utterly perfect. Just a hint of onion and garlic, smooth Gruyere cheese, and a touch of salt.

  “Of course, any commissioned reader or reconstructionist would have gained too much information about the Fairchild coven,” I said musingly, as if I was simply voicing my thoughts as they occurred to me. “How would you have dealt with that? One of my mother’s untraceable poisons, perhaps.”

  “Wisteria … I …” Rose finally broke her silence. “You can’t possibly think we would murder someone, anyone, to cover up anything Jasper had done.”

  The scrambled eggs were fluf
fy, without a hint of dryness. I looked at Declan, who was watching every little thing I was doing. “Remember that day in the orchard?”

  He arched an eyebrow at me, picking up his fork and scoring a bite of my potatoes. “With the rabbit.”

  Rose flinched as if Declan had slapped her.

  “He was seething with power that day,” I said, still keeping my tone completely casual. “I’m not sure that it didn’t distract him. Disposing of his apprentice’s body. Which was how we got off the property without him noticing.”

  Declan rubbed his neck. “He noticed.”

  “Eventually.”

  “He had a lot of apprentices.” Declan’s tone was deep and deadly.

  “But accidents happen,” I said, deliberately raising the tenor of my voice over his, light and sweet. “Don’t they, Rose?”

  Rose didn’t answer, choosing to walk away instead. My heart sank as I watched her disappear into the foyer.

  I never knew what I wanted from her, what I wanted from any of them. Something I couldn’t imagine they would give me even if they were capable of it.

  “Did that make you feel better?” Declan asked softly.

  Glancing over at him, I noticed that he’d seared his handprints into the linen tablecloth — something he used to do inadvertently when we were younger. So I wasn’t the only one letting my magic get away from me.

  I caught his golden-hazel gaze with my own, offering him a self-deprecating smirk. “You tell me.”

  Declan threw himself down in his chair without answering. I filled his mug with coffee, emptying the carafe. He nodded thanks, reaching for it but not drinking.

  “Jasmine keeps waiting for them to say sorry,” he said, gazing out the windows to my right.

  “I never expected an apology. Even at sixteen, I knew what it took to be a Fairchild. Never apologizing is one of their ten commandments.”

  Declan sipped his coffee, looking at me. The china mug was too small for his large hands.

  I nibbled on a piece of bacon, then carefully wiped my fingers on my napkin. “What I did expect was to be protected. I thought we three were worthy of being protected.”