by Mary Calmes
I cleared my throat. “Have you talked to his family?”
“I don’t know his family!” He blew up. “I barely know him, and now”—his head snapped up, and his eyes met mine—“I have no idea what to do!”
But I did. “Okay.”
“Okay?” He was stunned. It was written all over his face. “This is all you have to say?”
“Until I see him, yeah. That’s all I fuckin’ have to say.”
His eyes were locked on mine.
I turned to look out at the smeared world rushing by the window.
“Jackson.”
I didn’t turn.
“I’m sorry.”
There was no answer I could be expected to give him.
RENE HAD to slide a key card into a slot in the elevator to get to the penthouse. Other people got on, and I was apparently of interest. I was silent as I shed my trench coat and scarf, raked my fingers through my hair, and took off my tie. I watched the numbers light up one after another and gave nothing else my attention.
“I never realized how intimidating you are.”
“Compared to Malic, I’m a fuckin’ Boy Scout,” I said, stepping off the elevator when it stopped, the doors opening up into a living room. Amazing the nice digs money could buy.
The room was warm, and instantly I felt a twinge of loss for the home that Frank Sullivan could create. Fire blazing away, the muted Beethoven I could hear, the dinner I could smell, pot roast, maybe, and the touches everywhere that told me that Rene Favreau did not live alone. There were roses in a vase, the table was set for two, and the wine had been poured.
“Frankie!” Rene called out.
I swallowed down my heart and stood there and waited.
“I made Swiss steak and—Jackson.”
If I could just keep breathing, I would really have something.
He came into the room dressed in black jeans and a pale gray Henley. He was barefoot, which I found odd in the middle of winter, but it was warm, so maybe it was fine.
“Can I talk to you a minute?” I asked gently.
His eyes were all over me, and I was uncomfortable for Rene for no reason that made any sense. Why did I care if my ex was checking me out in front of his current boyfriend?
“Please.”
He looked over at Rene. “Why don’t you go change out of your wet clothes?”
“I—”
“Please,” Frank asked breathlessly. “I need a moment alone with him.”
Rene looked at him a long minute and then turned to me. I could tell that for the life of him he had no idea what was the right thing to do.
“Five minutes,” I told Rene. “That’s all.”
He was upset, and it took a lot out of him, but he left the room and us.
As soon as he was out of earshot—it was a massive space, so he had a way to go to actually exit the room—Frank turned his curious gaze to me. “What are you doing here?”
“I hear you’re hunting demons,” I replied softly.
His lips parted, and that tender mouth of his that had once kissed me so sweetly now hung open in surprise.
“Dangerous business, that.”
He just stared.
“And you said you hated everything about it.”
“I just want to help,” he told me, coming out of his momentary trance, putting his wineglass down on the table behind the couch.
“You miss the thrill of it, hearing about it, knowing it was real.”
“I felt important.”
He had been the most important thing in my life.
“I mean”—he took a step closer—“because I was there, you could do what you needed to do. I made a difference because you did.”
I nodded.
“And it’s the best secret ever.”
“Sure.”
“I figured out how I can help, and I have been.”
“But why would you want to?”
“Jackson, I––”
“Why not just forget all about it?” I felt my anger rising, but I was powerless to stop it.
“I can’t.”
“You told me you hated that I was a warder and you hated being the hearth of a warder.”
He pressed his lips together tight.
“Maybe it was just me you didn’t like.” I calmed, the truth, finally, rolling through me. It was useless to get mad; it was over and done with.
He sucked in a breath. “I just want to help, like I said.”
“By hurting them, the demons you come across.”
“Yes.”
“And you can tell because when you touch someone and it hurts, you know they’re a demon.”
He nodded.
“But it’s fading already,” I told him, because I knew. “You’re not hurting them anymore.”
His eyes, those soft doe eyes of his, got huge and round. “Yes. Why?”
“Why what?”
“I––my touch used to burn them and I could tell, just like you, said who was a demon and who wasn’t, but it doesn’t work anymore.”
“Of course not.”
“But why?” He closed in on me.
“You’re no longer the hearth of a warder.”
It was obvious from the look on his face that he had never once considered any of what I was telling him.
“Your house isn’t sealed, Frank. You need to be careful that nothing follows you home.”
His eyes filled with realization that turned quickly to fear.
I shrugged. “But why would it? You’re just a man. And if anything ever scares you, you can call me, all right?”
His eyes narrowed as he stepped closer to me, but when he lifted his hand toward me, I moved back beyond his reach.
“Since when?”
“Since when what?”
His eyebrows lifted. “I don’t get to touch you anymore?”
“Why would you want to?”
He seemed to consider that. “I thought that Rene being sweet and gentle at first would give way to heat and power and dominance,” he told me slowly, confessing, moving until he was standing in front of me, in my space, staring up into my eyes. “It didn’t.”
“Sweetheart of a guy all the way through, huh.” I smirked. “Too bad for you, since you like to be fucked up against walls.”
His jaw clenched as he shivered.
“No, wait, that’s not you anymore, is it?”
“I told you it wasn’t all I wanted. I never said I didn’t want it at all.”
Apparently he had gone from me manhandling him all the time to none at all from Rene. He wanted his sex life somewhere in between.
“You do a lot of your communicating through sex.”
He had never complained until the end. Or maybe I had just never heard him. Whatever the case, it was done. Rehashing was useless.
“You have nothing to say?”
“Make Rene use all your toys on you. That’ll help.”
Brows furrowed, and he could no longer keep my gaze. While I had never enjoyed the role-playing that Frank did, had not liked using his assortment of whips, clamps, and various restraints, I had done as he asked because it did it for him. The part I had loved was seeing all his barriers come down and having him come apart in my hands. His gratitude, that I would put aside my own discomfort for him, had been touching to see. I thought that my actions had spoken my love for him, but it turned out that he wanted words… and a penthouse view.
“So,” I said, stepping back, realizing that his scent had changed from when he used to sleep curled into my side. He didn’t smell like me anymore underneath everything else. I used to be able to press my nose in his hair and inhale our bed, our sheets, and my life. “No more demon hunting, because any second now, you’re gonna get your head torn off.”
“Jackson,” he said under his breath.
“Think of it as no longer having armor.”
“Jacks.”
But he didn’t want me. It was the high of the hunt he was in thrall to.
He was an adrenaline junkie looking for a danger fix, and I had no idea when that had happened. “You’re on the outside looking in now. Embrace this instead.” I gestured around. “I would.”
“I miss you,” he said.
It was a lie. There was no way he missed his life with me, which was small compared to the jet-setting, high-class dream he had going with Rene. “Stop what you’re doing, forget what you know, and buy a yacht or something.”
He stared at me as I started to go.
“Jackson,” he called softly, seductively, just the way he used to.
I didn’t stop. I walked back to the elevator instead. When I hit the button, the doors whooshed open at the same time I heard Rene call my name. I turned to face out, and he was there, holding the doors open so I couldn’t escape.
“He’s fine now,” I told him. “It’s all done. Ask him.”
He looked over his shoulder at Frank. “Tell me what’s going on?”
“Everything’s fine.” Frank forced a smile. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
Rene was nonplussed, I could tell, at a complete loss to understand what was going on around him. And who could blame him? “One visit from your ex, and you’re all fine?”
“I just needed some resolution,” Frank lied, eyes flicking to mine.
I met them for seconds, wasn’t sure what I saw—desire, hatred, hard to tell all of a sudden. I couldn’t read him anymore because I no longer knew him.
“Jackson.”
I looked at Rene, and there was pain all over his face.
“Don’t think too hard about it,” I cautioned him. “Move your hand.”
But he didn’t. He slipped into the elevator beside me instead.
“Wait,” Frank yelled as the doors shut.
I didn’t move, didn’t speak, and was, in fact, doing a great impression of a statue.
“Please talk to me.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Look at me.”
After a minute, I did.
“Was he always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Manic. He has such highs and such lows…. I had no idea.”
“He’s not manic. He’s not schizophrenic. He’s not anything but him,” I promised. “My guess would be that he got overly tired, that ending things with me and starting them with you took more of an emotional toll than he was willing to admit. I think he just needed to see me and have his moment of closure.”
It was a really good story. I was kind of proud of myself.
“I would have thought you would have had closure when you begged him over and over to take you back. When you stalked him and—”
“Closure for him.” I cut him off. “I know what I did, and I know why he left, and I’m smart enough to know that he wants you and not me.”
“But being with you was more exciting than being with me. You, your business, your world is much more prone to life and death than mine.”
He had no idea.
“I think he misses hearing about the excitement, all your near misses.”
The man was more perceptive than I gave him credit for, and I realized that in another life, where he had not stolen the man I loved from me, we could have been friends.
“Shit,” I groaned.
“What?”
The truth was that Frank had wanted to go. It took two. Rene had stolen nothing from me. Frank had run away.
“I think he misses his life with you.”
“He doesn’t,” I said, putting on my jacket and trench coat, wrapping the scarf around my neck. “And when he’s in Paris with you, you’ll both forget that any of this ever happened.”
“How did you know we were going to Paris?”
One of the main things that Frank had thrown up in my face was that Rene was going to show him the world that I never could. So it made sense that when the globetrotting began, it would start in the place that Frank had always wanted to see more than anything.
“I know Frank,” I lied.
He nodded. “You do.”
“So will you,” I told him, sighing deeply as the elevator dinged loudly and the doors slid open. “Good-bye, Rene.”
“I’ll see you around.”
I really hoped not.
“Jackson!”
I pivoted around to look at him.
“I miss Malic.”
I made the international sign for a phone with my thumb and pinky.
“He won’t talk to me.”
“I’ll put in a good word for you,” I said before I took a few steps backward and then turned, jogging toward the doors. The entryway felt immense, but when I was finally outside, I felt lighter, like I could breathe.
I pulled my phone from the inside pocket of my suit jacket and called my sentinel.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” I said as I shivered in the damp, chilled night air. The rain had stopped, leaving that sheen on the road and puddles on the sidewalk. It smelled wet and cold, and I breathed it in deep. “I have to talk to you. Can I come by?”
“Of course. Where are you?”
“I’m in the city, but I can be out to Sausalito in an hour or so.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“Excellent,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I just made some borscht. Come over and have some.”
And remembering Phoebe and how much she hated beets and how much I hated them, as well, I started laughing there on the street. I laughed until tears rolled down my eyes.
“For crissakes, Jaka, it’s not that funny. If you don’t like soup, you don’t have to have any. You can have a sandwich if you want.”
His comment didn’t help, considering that I had started out my night with a sandwich being all I wanted.
V
THE RISK, Jael had explained to me over dinner that night, which was maroon-colored soup for him and a roast beef sandwich for me, was that sometimes when a warder and hearth parted, the hearth went mad. Frank’s obsession, from what Jael said, was on the healthy side compared to what he had seen and heard.
The best-case scenario, outside of a hearth and warder growing old together, was that the hearth left the warder, as Frank had done, and not the other way around. When a warder left, he or she left behind a broken heart and took away a whole other world at the same time. To be the hearth of a warder meant that you knew more than most people, understood that supernatural forces were real, and had to be, for another person, their whole life. A lot of hearths could not separate their warrior from the person they loved, and that was fine as long as the love remained. When it was time to say good-bye, it was a lot to give up.
Jael understood Frank’s desire to hold on to the piece of power that he had.
“He probably does want you back, Jaka,” he said, using my warder name, my call sign, handle, whatever it was, instead of my given name. “Paris is luminous, but how can it compare to the adrenaline rush of living with a warder?”
“I’m thinking Paris beats killing demons any day of the week.”
“For you.”
“For anybody with a brain.”
He chuckled low and deep and reached out to put his hand on my face. “You’ll make a very pragmatic sentinel one day.”
“Me?” I laughed. “You’ve got me mixed up with Marcus or Ryan.”
He shook his head. “Rindahl hates warding and does only what he must. It’s why he keeps his life with Julian so separate. You can’t lead what you don’t even want to follow.”
“I guess,” I conceded. “But Marcus?”
“Marot’s dreams are in the physical world with Joey, and he won’t jeopardize those to lead.” He lifted his hand to shut me up when I tried to interrupt him. “Leith is far too gentle for the job, and Malic is far too rash.”
“Malic would get us all killed.” I smiled at Jael.
“Not purposely.” He nodded. “But yes. He thinks you are all as strong as he is.”
�
��Aren’t we?”
“No. Malic is strongest, Rindahl fastest, Leith is the most logical, and Marot is the caretaker. I have never seen anyone, even in the heat of battle, check and know where everyone else is.”
“That’s why he should be sentinel.”
“If Marot were sentinel, no chance would ever be taken. He fears loss more than any man I know.”
“And me? What am I good at?”
“Normally you’re the one who leads, Jaka. Any of the others would follow you anywhere. It’s a gift.”
I thought about his words. “You said normally.”
“Yes. You’re not yourself. You seem to be in the middle of some crisis of faith that I can’t help you with.”
“I’ll get over it.”
“I hope so.”
“But what if I never find another hearth?”
He shrugged. “I worry least about you even though the others fear for your sanity.”
“Nice.”
He smiled. “I have had many warders in my lifetime and been to many council sessions and met and trained warders from all over the world. I have to say that I would put the five of you—Malic, Marot, you, Rindahl, and Leith—among the best. A lot of warder clutches are stronger individually but not collectively. The five of you work better together than any I have ever seen, and I assure you that you balance each other out quite remarkably.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Ask another question?”
“Of course.”
“Why the damn warder names?”
He squinted at me. “Some of you have dealings with a large number of the people, others do not. Leith is a welder, Malic owns a club, both of which are more solitary professions. You, Rindahl, Marot, lead very public lives, and as such, if a demon were to discover you and scream out your warder names, those that are recorded at the Labarum, all would be well.”
“I guess, though Malic owning a strip club would technically qualify as him seeing and dealing with a lot of people.”
“He does not strip himself.”
I scoffed. “No, he doesn’t, thank God.”
“That was very unkind.”
Like I cared. I made a face watching him eat the borscht. “It looks like you’re eating blood.”
“That’s charming.”
I thought of something. “Hey, isn’t next week when you take your trip to Scotland to see your intended?”