“Maybe check in with Rose again?”
“Right.” Declan fished his phone out of his pocket, then stalked out into the entranceway. “I’d prefer to blow something up, but I’ll make some phone calls instead.” He flung open the front door and stepped out.
“I always hated that arbor on the north side of the gardens,” I called after him. “It’s ugly, and prone to moss.”
He stuck his head back through the open doorway, grinning. “Noted.”
I laughed quietly, turning back into the parlor and hearing the front door click closed behind me.
Instead of moving my circle with me down the back stairs, I had let its magic ebb. So I went about setting my candles at four points in the room, walking a circle north to west to south to east. I lit the green candle at the north side of the room, then glanced out the front windows as I moved to the blue candle to the west.
Declan was slowly wandering across the front lawn. His phone was pressed to his ear, a smile softening his face.
My stomach squelched. Every smile I’d seen from him in the last two days had been heavy with sarcasm or laced with anger. Tinged with pain. Whoever he was speaking with, it was someone he was completely relaxed around. So not Rose or Grey.
I looked away, lighting the blue candle, then moving on to the red pillar perched on the fireplace mantel. Which was appropriate, since red symbolized fire. It was likely that all the fireplaces in the house were placed on south walls. I’d never thought to check when I was younger, and I hadn’t walked these rooms since I was sixteen. But Fairchilds never let anything happen by chance, even architecture, it seemed.
Which once again raised the question of what four vampires were doing in Litchfield, Connecticut. Because whatever Kett thought, I found the idea that they were here by chance all but impossible to believe.
Crossing past the fireplace toward the white candle on the eastern side of the room, I brushed a pocket of magic with my left thigh. It was new. Presumably something I’d called forth while pacing out the circle. I lit the final candle for air, feeding my magic into that circle and snapping it shut. Then I reached for the residual I’d sensed, immediately pulling out a moment from the recent past.
The light deepened in the room, now emanating solely from a pile of blazing logs in the fireplace.
An ash-blond man in a wheelchair sat with his back to me, gazing into the dancing flames. His hair was shorter, thinner than it had been in the glimpse I’d seen of him in the reconstruction. The vision that had almost trapped me in the orchard.
“Jasper,” I whispered. My heart thumped once in my chest. Then twice. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the reconstruction to play out before me so I could watch it front to back instead of in reverse. I inhaled slowly and deeply, trying to settle myself while the magic unfolded before me, unseen.
It was just a reconstruction.
And no matter how much I might have been trying to deflect from it all the time since then, I’d been prepared to see him again since I’d opened the envelope and watched Jasmine’s necklace fall onto my kitchen counter.
The magic of the circle shifted, announcing Declan’s return. I turned my head, opening my eyes but carefully directing my gaze across at him, through the circle. There was no need to be that careful, though. The reconstruction of the residual was already thinning.
Declan was standing in the doorway to the foyer, his hand pressed to my circle. He met my gaze. There was nothing soft about his face now. He was livid.
“I only caught the end.”
I nodded. Then, raising my palms to the circle, I called the collected magic to me and replayed the reconstruction.
Within the circle, flames flared to life in the fireplace. Jasper, in the wheelchair with his back to me, settled his hand on his lap. It was an easy guess that the spell he’d used to trigger the blaze had left the residual for me to collect.
No matter the strength of my resolve, I was glad I couldn’t see his face.
“Jasmine Fairchild does not work at my behest,” he said, not looking away from the fire. His tone was clipped and precise.
In the green antique chaise perpendicular to the fireplace, a ruddy-haired, pale-skinned man smiled smugly, relaxed.
Not a man. A vampire. Yale.
“So you have no objections to my questioning her?” Yale asked. His Welsh accent was thick and melodic.
“As I said, vampire.” Jasper gestured toward the fireplace, drawing tendrils of flames effortlessly to his hand. He let that fire play across his fingers. “But you should speak to Rose. She’s the proper point of contact.”
Yale straightened on the couch, immediately wary of the implicit threat in Jasper’s gesture — casually calling forth and playing with fire.
“Show-off,” Declan sneered. “Junior magic.”
“Nothing is basic when he wields it,” I said.
“Rose?” the vampire echoed with forced amusement. “The healer?”
“The member of the Convocation,” Jasper said.
“I understood you to be the power in eastern North America.”
“Your information is outdated,” Jasper said smoothly. “Something that is no doubt a common occurrence for your species.”
Anger flashed across Yale’s features, but he quickly smoothed the emotion.
Declan snorted. “Once a Fairchild, always a Fairchild.”
“Pay attention to the vampire,” I murmured. “He carries himself differently than Kett does. He’s more emotional.”
“Even if I was inclined to broker a meeting between you and my niece, I’m leaving town tomorrow morning. Plus, Jasmine would never willingly set foot on the estate. Nor would her cousin or brother. Though I have tried to make peace with them multiple times.”
Declan laughed harshly. “I wonder where I was for all those offered olive branches?”
“Would you have accepted one?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“I’ll take my leave then, Jasper Fairchild.” Yale moved from the chaise so quickly that the magic of the reconstruction blurred. He was standing beside Jasper, holding out his hand. “I’m sure we will meet again.”
My uncle slowly shifted his gaze from the fire to the vampire looming over him. The side of his face was shadowed, but whatever Yale saw in my uncle’s eyes made him drop his hand and nod curtly.
Then the vampire was gone.
Jasper flicked his fingers, sending the flames he’d been playing with into the fireplace.
The fire died. And the reconstruction faded.
I glanced over at Declan. His gaze was fixed on the empty, cold fireplace. His jaw was set, as if he was clenching his teeth fiercely.
“I’m not going to collect it,” I said, willing the circle closed by snuffing out the white candle I still stood next to. “It isn’t worth the oyster-shell cube.”
Declan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, either I just called forth evidence that conveniently absolves Jasper. Or the scene was set up. Playacted for me to find.”
“Rose got in contact with Jasper, confirming that he’s not in Litchfield,” Declan said. “He obviously told her nothing about this conversation. So he might not have colluded with the vampire, but he did nothing to protect Jasmine.”
I nodded, systematically snuffing the candles one by one and leaving them to cool and harden. I didn’t understand why Declan would have expected anything else from Jasper. Perhaps he held out hope that some sort of mitigating factor would arise that would absolve our uncle for our childhoods.
I kept my tone as casual as I could while changing one painful subject for another. “How long has Rose been sick? Sick enough that she’s not the one rehabilitating Jasper?”
“Jasmine thinks his injuries were always beyond Rose’s abilities to fully heal,” Declan said. “Beyond anyone’s abilities, since he’s still in that chair. But whatever is happening to her has been getting worse over the last year and a half, maybe.”
&
nbsp; “And?”
“And she won’t talk about it. Even Jasmine can’t broach the subject with her.”
“Do you think that’s what all the talk about us returning to the coven is about? She’s dying? And our absence is somehow contributing to whatever has weakened her?”
Declan scrubbed his hand through his hair. “One thing at a time, hey?”
A text message pinged through on my cellphone. I retrieved it from my bag, opening a text from Kett.
>The second charge from last night is a grocery store.
“Grocery store? So?” Declan asked, reading over my shoulder.
“Vampires don’t eat,” I murmured, then hope bloomed in my chest. “They’re feeding Jasmine.”
Another text appeared on my screen.
>Shipping labels both track to a FedEx drop box on West Street. Paid for by the same credit card. Dead end.
“That’s only fifteen minutes from here,” Declan said. “From the north edge of the property, anyway.”
I had no idea how many FedEx drop boxes there were in Litchfield. But understanding that the vampires had been that close to the estate, that close to Jasper — realizing that Yale was making no effort to keep away from the coven — a chill suddenly settled over me.
“The basement,” I said, thinking out loud as I clicked the missing pieces of the puzzle together. “Kett said all the vampires, including Yale, would need to be underground. Somewhere with a basement. And Yale knew that Jasper would be out of town.”
“I doubt Kett would have missed four vampires in the basement.”
“Declan! The caretaker’s cottage. It has a basement.”
“A glorified root cellar, maybe. But staying on Fairchild land with a kidnapped Fairchild witch? That would be stupidly risky.”
But I was already stuffing my candles into my bag. “He likes to play games,” I said. “Yale. What better place to hide from Fairchild witches but on unoccupied Fairchild land? Jasper outright told Yale that you and I would never willingly set foot on the estate.”
I tugged on my wool coat as I raced for the back door, heading through the dining room and kitchen with Declan shouting behind me as he followed.
“Wisteria! How could they have gotten by the wards?”
“Jasmine’s blood,” I shouted over my shoulder. I didn’t bother to shut the kitchen door behind me as I raced outside.
Chapter 10
I ran, cutting around the gardens so I didn’t need to deal with gates and zigzagging paths. I ran, heedless of the overgrown bushes and branches encroaching on the stone pathways that radiated from the back of the manor, spreading across the rest of the property. I ran, cresting a slight hill, my lungs already burning with the effort of keeping up the pace, though I was barely a quarter of the way to the caretaker’s cottage to the north.
Something buzzed by me on the left, shoving me off the path and into the grass. I stayed on my feet — barely — and willfully ignored the fact that it felt as though the magic of the estate was the only thing keeping me steady.
A golf cart slid to a stop a few feet away from me. Declan, in the driver’s seat, glared back at me over his shoulder.
“Get in.”
In my panic, in my need to be right about Jasmine being on the property, I’d forgotten about the golf cart.
I climbed in, clutching my bag in my lap as Declan zoomed off down the path without another word.
We wove through trees as we crossed the back half of the property, losing much of the sunlight as we did so, despite the fact that the tangle of branches overhead were bare.
“When does the sun set?” I asked.
Declan shook his head. “Soon. An hour? Forty-five minutes? Does it have to be below the horizon for them to … wake?”
“I don’t know.”
The back of the cottage came into sight. The building was of a later vintage than the manor, and tiny in comparison — though it was still bigger than my apartment by far. And it had a basement. A glorified root cellar, as Declan called it. I hadn’t tied it to the vampires because it never occurred to me that they’d be reckless enough to squat on Fairchild property. Apparently, I still had a lot to learn about the motivations and machinations of immortal creatures.
The back gate to the cottage’s fenced yard hung open. I barreled out of the golf cart before Declan had even fully stopped, thinking of nothing but how Jasmine might have been within our reach for hours now. And how terrified she must be with the approach of sunset.
“Wisteria!” Declan shouted.
I blew through the gate, managing to not trip over a tangle of dead flower stems and bushes that were trying to overgrow the cracked cement path that led through the yard to the back kitchen patio.
I was four or five steps away from the three wooden stairs that led to the back door, already stretching my arm out for the handle, when magic bloomed beside me. In my near hysteria, I’d triggered a spell of some sort along the path.
Declan slammed into me, throwing me tumbling across the yard. I came to a painful rest, crushing a rhododendron bush.
The spell I’d triggered hit Declan. He pivoted into it, covering his face and neck with his arm as the bulk of the malicious magic splattered across his leather jacket. Keeping his feet firmly planted, he dropped his arm and met my terrified gaze across the small yard.
Red pustules sprang up across the left side of his neck and face.
I moaned and scrambled to my feet, ready to lunge across to him.
“Stay there,” he snarled. “Just slow down, Wisteria. Slow the hell down.”
I froze.
He rotated his head, stretching out his neck. The pustules faded from red to light pink without bursting.
“Poison?” I asked in a whisper.
“Apparently,” he said angrily.
Feeling utterly stupid for not having done so right away, I lowered my personal shields, scanning the yard as I would have before conducting a reconstruction. Jasper hadn’t typically used poison as the base for the traps he’d hidden around the estate, all of them set up for us to trigger as part of our ongoing training. “Something by your left foot.”
“I see it.”
Feeling nothing in my immediate vicinity, I slowly stepped back across the yard until I was within a few feet of Declan. He’d thrown me clear. Then I hunched down, examining the spell by his foot and rubbing my right shoulder.
“I hurt you,” Declan murmured. “I’m sorry.”
“I was the one running blindly.”
“It was uncharacteristic.”
I nodded, preferring to drop the topic and focus on getting into the cottage. “I believe you can step back. Or around,” I said. “You haven’t brushed the edges of the spell yet.”
Declan shifted his foot back, then hunched down next to me to survey the path and the decrepit wooden steps that led to the back patio.
“Everything is so … run-down now,” I whispered.
“Or we’re seeing it all with fresh eyes.”
I sighed. “No. We’re seeing it after twelve years without Bluebell.” I pointed ahead. “I see three more faint purple spots on the path, and the entire second step is spelled with something.”
“I see the same.”
“I don’t think these are Jasper’s spells. The placement is too obvious, and his magic is dark blue. What kind of Adept casts purple magic?”
Declan shook his head. “And the wards on the house? Will they allow you entry?”
I straightened. Declan mimicked my movement to tower over me on my left. I carefully navigated the path, stopping just below the steps so I could feel the protections on the cottage.
“The wards feel familiar, like Fairchild magic.”
Declan grunted, crouching down to eye the second step. “But the spells don’t feel like witch magic. Not entirely.”
I stared up at the cottage. “So … they’re here, then?”
“It would seem prudent for vampires to lay traps around their dayti
me resting spot.”
I nodded and pulled out my phone, texting Kett.
We believe the vampires are in the caretaker’s cottage. The traps aren’t witch magic.
Declan eyed me over his shoulder, then glanced back at the spelled steps. “I didn’t know vampires could cast.”
“Purchased, maybe.”
“From who? Your mother?”
“There are other potion masters,” I said dryly. “Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they bought them from her. I imagine they’re expensive spells, and there isn’t much of a demand for them.”
“Attempted murder is still a crime, even in Fairchild territory. But I would have recognized one of Violet’s brews, especially spattered across my skin.”
“I’m sorry.”
Declan grunted dismissively.
We had all ingested my mother’s magic many times over the years. Not enough to permanently harm us, of course. But enough to inoculate us from any potions that might be used against us by potential rivals. Enemies we were born with simply because we were Fairchilds.
A message pinged through on my phone.
>Wait for me.
I showed Declan the screen as he stood. He curled his lip derisively, and that was all the encouragement I needed to press forward.
When I reached for the wooden railing, it shifted in my grasp. Slivers of paint peeled off underneath my hand. But hoping it would hold beneath my weight, I carefully stepped up with my left foot. Then I lifted my right foot over the spelled second step, stretching forward to reach the third. Declan’s hand hovered around my elbow, but I thankfully cleared the step without incident. I didn’t fancy being flung across the yard a second time.
I crossed the four-foot-wide patio, scanning the door and then the windows, through which I could see the empty kitchen and part of the central hall. Declan traversed the stairs behind me.
Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2) Page 19