I looked triumphantly at Jasmine.
She shook her head, though. Doubtful. “Jasper knew Declan existed. He must have used some sort of blood-based spell to track him. With Grey’s blood … or mine …” She frowned thoughtfully.
“And if a vampire was hunting witches? What do you think they hunt by? Blood.”
“And unaffiliated witches would be easier to snatch,” Declan murmured.
“You knew what you were, Declan,” I said. “Even at nine. But what if you hadn’t grown up with a magical parent? What if you’d been born with a recessive gene?”
“The Academy tracks magical manifestations,” Jasmine said.
“When they’re strong enough to register,” I said. “When an Adept reaches puberty, say. But Yale took Ruby knowing her mother was practically alone in the world. If Jon hadn’t come back when he did …”
Jasmine’s fingertips hovered over her keyboard. “I still have no idea where to start.”
“Police reports,” Kett said, strolling through from the front of the jet. “Strange animal attacks. Odd disappearances. Panicked calls to 911 by children that were later deemed pranks.”
“Los Angeles is a large place,” Jasmine groused. But her fingers were already flying across the keys of her laptop.
Kett’s gaze settled on Declan as he slipped into the seat in front of Jasmine, then rotated it so all four of us were facing each other. “The heart attack or stroke of an elderly caretaker,” he said thoughtfully, adding to his list of possibilities for Jasmine to research.
Declan eyed him, a deep frown etched across his face. “What are you implying, vampire?”
“Not everything happens naturally.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, aghast. “Are you thinking … Declan’s grandfather?”
“I don’t know anything for sure,” Kett said. “But the timing is suspect, isn’t it?”
Declan clenched the arms of his seat, jutting his jaw out angrily. “Losing my grandfather put me on the streets. What the hell would that benefit …” A terrible realization flooded through him.
“Oh, no,” Jasmine gasped, pausing her search. “That’s not … that’s … crazy.”
“You think Jasper murdered my grandfather.” Declan’s voice was flat, emotionless.
“I’m saying it was easier to extricate you from New Orleans abandoned, rather than tied to family.” Kett’s tone was stiffly dispassionate. “You indicated you would have fought if a vampire had tried to take you.”
Declan didn’t answer, his lips tightening until they were just a strip of white cutting across his tanned face.
“How easy was it for Jasper to pick you up?” Kett asked. “What did he do to convince you to come with him?”
Declan’s eyes cut to Jasmine, then to me.
“Did he have pictures? Of Jasmine? Of Fairchild Manor?” Kett asked silkily.
“Enough,” I whispered. Then I strengthened my voice. “That’s enough. This isn’t a game, Kett.”
A tense silence settled around us. I glanced out the window. Miles and miles of gray cloud shielded the earth from my view.
“My apologies, Declan,” Kett said coolly.
Declan lifted his hand, waving off the vampire’s sentiment.
Jasmine applied her fingers to her keyboard again. The renewal of her incessant tapping instantly soothed me.
“I know what to look for now,” she said.
Declan shifted his seat back, closing his eyes. He brushed his ankle against mine. In response, I curled my foot around his leg, offering a touch of comfort. Then I remembered that wasn’t my role anymore … or that it soon wasn’t going to be. I pulled my leg away, meeting Kett’s silvered gaze instead.
After another fifteen minutes of listening to Declan’s quiet snoring and Jasmine’s typing, I slipped back through the sleek jet to the bathroom. I wanted to freshen up, though I knew I was doing so more as an excuse to keep busy rather than from any actual need. It would likely be warmer in Los Angeles, though, so a change of clothing might be in order. Any outfit that required nylons would definitely be out and inappropriately dressy for a visit to a group home.
Still thinking over what items of clothing I’d packed, I opened the door to the bathroom to return to my seat. Kett was leaning back against the far wall. His posture was slumped. Casual. As if he waited for women outside of bathrooms all the time.
His woman.
Me.
My breath caught in my throat.
He lifted his silvered gaze to me, curling his lips in an expectant smirk. As if he was gleefully anticipating the tongue-lashing he deserved for needling Declan with suppositions and innuendo about his grandfather’s death.
Except I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of fulfilling his expectations that I’d be typical and trite. Instead, I lifted my chin archly. “If you were any other male, I would think you were looking to join me.”
“I’m patiently awaiting an invitation.”
My jaw dropped. I scanned his face for sincerity. Kett’s smile twisted, turning almost self-deprecating. I glanced up the aisle toward the passenger cabin, where I could see Declan’s long legs and a section of Jasmine’s riot of curls as she bowed over her computer.
“Asleep,” Kett whispered. “And otherwise occupied.”
I looked back at him, knowing that in a moment he’d hold his hand out to me — always inviting me to touch him, always careful to not overwhelm me.
“I’m not a victim,” I said matter-of-factly. “Yes, Jasper abused me. He abused us all, but I don’t … I have a more difficult time with my mother, actually. Of her not protecting me when I came to her. Jasper is just … ill. Damaged. Likely abused himself.”
“So the literature would suggest.”
I laughed quietly. “You’ve been reading books about abuse victims?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve been reading books about abuse survivors … since January.”
Since Kett had offered me a sexual relationship. Since he’d offered to be my lover. To compete for my affections, if that was what it took for me to accept his offer of an immortal existence with him.
I took a step, closing the space between us just enough so that I could gather his thin cashmere sweater in my hand and pull him toward me. He came without resistance. Or at least he made a show of ceding control. I couldn’t have moved him otherwise.
I tugged him against me. Our thighs and hipbones brushed. Then I stepped back into the bathroom, acting on a sudden desire to be without thought. To be without obligation.
In two-inch heels, I was only a couple of inches shorter than him. He flicked the door closed behind us, turning away only to flip the lock.
I pressed against the hard length of him, molding myself against his body. I lifted my gaze to his, seeing nothing in his gaze but the silvered blue of his eyes. Hovering my parted lips over his, I breathed him in. He smelled like breath mints. Peppermint, maybe.
I laughed quietly at the idea that an ancient vampire had freshened his breath for me.
Kett ran his fingers up my bare arms. His touch was featherlight.
I darted the tip of my tongue into his mouth, but withdrew it before he could close the kiss. He laughed huskily, the sound running through me. I shuddered, turning my head slightly away. His breath whispered across my neck.
He brushed his thumb across my nipple, coaxing it to harden in an instant even through my dress and bra. Shivers of desire fluttered in my stomach.
I moaned softly.
Then, even before I’d registered the movement, he had me propped up on the counter beside the sink with his hand up my dress. I wrapped my right leg around him, spreading my left leg so he could slip his fingers between my thighs. I gasped as he made contact with me through my underwear, then pushed the lace fabric aside, pleasure flooding away the embarrassment of opening myself to him so eagerly, without words, without even a kiss.
I arched back into the hand he held steadily at the small of
my back, pressing my center into his fingers. Abandoning myself to the orgasm that was already curling my toes and burning through my nether regions.
I moaned, swallowing the need to vocalize as I convulsed underneath his steady touch, swiftly climaxing.
He eased his pressure, whispering into the skin of my neck, “Another?”
I opened my eyes, finding him only inches away. I lifted my hand to caress his face, running my fingers over his firm lips. “Who says no to seconds?”
He chuckled, rubbing a finger against me in a slow but steady circular pattern without further prompting.
I gasped as I wrapped my hand around his wrist, delaying the pleasure, but not denying it. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his ear. “Bite me.”
“Not today,” he said. “I want you clearheaded and focused on me, Wisteria Fairchild. Not befuddled by my venom, which won’t have the same effect on you when you’ve been remade.”
He lifted an eyebrow, as if asking me to argue.
Not dropping my gaze from his, I loosened my hold on his wrist. He slipped his fingers through my wetness, slowly increasing the rhythm of his touch. I kept my gaze locked to his until my breathing was once again ragged.
“So … take you as you are, as you will be to me?” I asked. My voice quivered with pleasure. “You … we … won’t drink from each other when I’m remade?”
A deep-red haze rolled across his eyes. “Oh, we will drink from each other. Deeply.”
He kissed me then, darting his cool tongue into my mouth. I met him with my own, matching the steady rhythm of his fingers.
I orgasmed a second time without warning, nearly falling off the counter as pleasure liquefied my limbs.
He grunted with such satisfaction, with such a human sound, that I had to laugh breathlessly.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You are welcome to anything I have to give, Wisteria. God knows, you’ll have to take my shortcomings as well.”
I snorted quietly. “God knows?”
“I’m open to the idea of an ultimate creator. I just know that divinity had no hand in my second incarnation.”
I traced my fingers across his cheekbone, then down along his jaw. “Well … I have to believe that our choices … our deeds define us. Even if we are only … good enough.”
“Good to a few good people,” he whispered against my neck. “I can do that.”
“A conversation for another time.” I licked his neck lightly, running my tongue up his carotid artery. And for the first time since we’d entered the bathroom, he was the one who shuddered involuntarily.
I smiled against his smooth, hard skin, feeling exceedingly wicked. Then I spent some intense time figuring out where else he liked to be touched … or licked, as the case might be.
“I’ve got a half-dozen possible incidents that I could dig deeper into,” Jasmine said before I’d even made it back to my seat. “Including a fire with no probable cause that will likely be ruled arson any day now, a couple of siblings remanded to state care after their grandmother had a stroke, an unusual animal attack, multiple reports of flashing lights in an abandoned warehouse … and Jack Harris.”
Jasmine spun her laptop so I could see the screen as I settled back into my seat. “Twelve years old. Reported as running away from his group home on January 4.”
“And?” Declan spoke up though he remained inclined back in his seat. I’d thought he was asleep.
“Every window on the first floor of the facility was broken,” Jasmine said. “Completely shattered that same morning. No one knows what happened.”
I leaned across the aisle, peering at the picture of a mixed-race boy with dark-blue eyes on Jasmine’s screen. He looked closer to ten than twelve. “They could have at least updated the picture,” I said. “Are they saying Jack broke the windows?”
Jasmine shook her head. “Someone made a call to 911 from the group home number. I’m trying to get access to the recording. The police investigated, but it’s still listed as an open case. I connected the missing person report, which was filed two weeks after, to the broken window incident myself. I’m not sure the police have done so yet.”
“Does Jack have a history of running away?” Declan straightened up in his seat.
“Yeah.”
“That’s why they haven’t connected it yet.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “That the police would write off a twelve-year-old’s disappearance?”
“I’m saying that a boy who’s run away repeatedly and is currently living in a group home has fewer advocates. That’s all.”
I leaned farther out of my chair, attempting to read the file Jasmine had found on Jack. “You think it was wild magic?”
“I think there’s a chance,” she said. “Declan broke windows multiple times when we were younger.”
“Training incidents,” her brother groused. “It’s doubtful that an unregistered fledgling witch would have the amount of magic it would take to inadvertently break every window on the ground floor.”
I glanced to Declan. Caught in a death echo I’d inadvertently reconstructed outside of a circle in October, I’d unknowingly lashed out and broken every window in a funeral home in an attempt to free myself. Still, he was right. Though that was ample evidence that such an incident could result from a burst of emotionally fueled wild magic, I was no fledgling.
I reached across the aisle to turn Jasmine’s laptop, but she batted my hand away. “Don’t you come any closer. I can’t replace my computer while we’re in the air.”
Nodding to acknowledge her concerns, I scanned the screen from a distance. “Mom dead, father unknown. He’s been in the system for six years? Why hasn’t he been adopted?”
“Keep reading.” Jasmine ran her finger up the laptop’s trackpad, scrolling down so I could read more of the file.
My gaze snagged on his date of birth as she scrolled past. “Wait,” I murmured. “Wait. Go back.”
Jasmine obligingly scrolled back up the page.
I stared at the date on the screen. September 9. “That has to just be … a typo.”
Jasmine pivoted the laptop back so it faced her. “What?”
“His birthday.”
Jasmine’s jaw dropped. “I … I didn’t bother looking closely. The missing person’s report simply lists him as twelve years old.”
“What?” Declan asked. “He isn’t?”
“Can you confirm it?” I asked. “Find his birth certificate?”
Jasmine nodded, her fingers already flying over the keys.
“I just love playing the game where you don’t answer any questions,” Declan said, exceedingly heavy on the sarcasm.
I settled back in my seat, glancing at Declan, then looking out the window. “He was born on the same day as me.”
“Okay, so? It’s a weird coincidence.” He glanced between Jasmine and me.
“Ruby Cameron was born on the same day as you,” I said.
Declan frowned. “Yeah? That’s … odd.”
“Yeah, odd.”
“And if Jack was a witch … is a witch, how did Yale track him down?” I asked. “Are there any other reports of odd incidents?”
“If. If Yale tracked him down,” Jasmine said, correcting and cautioning me at the same time. “We’re jumping to conclusions without much to base them on … other than Kett’s belief that there would be more than one kidnapping, Yale’s car rental, and some broken windows.”
“Why hasn’t he been adopted?” I asked quietly. “Because he’s … different? Because weird things happen around him when he gets upset, so he’s been deemed violent?”
“Harris isn’t a typical witch surname,” Declan said, offering counterpoints rather than outright disagreeing with me.
“Could be his father’s name,” I said. “Could be a name his mother took during a previous marriage. Could be that the witch magic skipped a generation or two.”
“Could be that the kid’s a psychopath,” J
asmine said. But her fingers stilled on her keyboard before I could counter her argument with the fact that the police report would probably have indicated Jack had broken the windows if that was the case. “It’s not a typo.” She looked up from her screen, locking her gaze to mine. “Okay. So that’s officially weird.”
I nodded. “I’ll need to get into the group home.”
“Too bad they’ll have replaced the windows by now,” Declan said. “We could get in under the guise of being a work crew.”
Jasmine snorted. “Please? Wisteria as a glazier?”
I laughed. “You think you could pass any better?”
“I’ll be the one in the car, glued to my computer.”
I leaned my head back. “If we were Kett, we’d just buy the building.”
I was totally joking as I said it, but Declan and Jasmine glanced at each other thoughtfully.
“Don’t be crazy,” I said. “We can’t buy the building.”
Jasmine’s fingers hit the keyboard again as she muttered to herself. “The group home must be funded with some combination of private and government money. It’s doubtful they’re funded well enough to own the building outright. So who does?”
“We can’t buy the building just because I need to reconstruct residual magic we don’t even know exists.”
Grumbling, Declan pulled out his phone, then levered himself out of his seat. “I’ll call Grey.”
“Good, good,” Jasmine said absentmindedly.
They were both completely ignoring me. “Absolutely not!” I cried. “The proper channels of … we’d have to submit a requisition to the Convocation.”
“Which would take weeks,” Jasmine said. “Plus, we’d have to prove that something actually occurred on the property to justify the financial outlay. And to do that, we’d need to have already obtained the reconstruction you want to cast.”
Declan wandered forward toward the galley, then poked around in the cupboards with his phone pressed to his ear.
“There has to be another, easier way,” I said.
“Like one that doesn’t involve our parents?”
“Like one where we pose as social workers or police investigators,” I said, helplessly casting around for ideas.
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