Consort of Pain_A Paranormal Reverse Harem Novel

by Eva Chase

  No, it was just that it didn’t feel good acting as if they shouldn’t be standing beside me. As if I were ashamed of who I’d taken as my consorts, when that wasn’t true in the slightest.

  “I’ve got your back too,” Philomena said, blinking into being to stroll along beside me. She gave me a wink and twirled her sun umbrella. The last few times she’d appeared, she’d looked a little translucent. I thought maybe she’d faded a little more. It seemed rude to call attention to that, though.

  “Thank you for the company,” I said dryly.

  “Oh, I mean it. You should see what I can do with a parasol when threatened.”

  I had to smile. “I believe it.”

  I sat down on the picnic table near the signpost to wait. Apparently Margo had shown up early. As soon as my bottom hit the wooden boards, a stout figure with a short-sleeved cardigan pulled over a pastel flowered dress emerged from the thicker woods to join me.

  “Now there is a witch,” Phil murmured, and I couldn’t argue that.

  Margo Elands fit the look of a stereotypical witch so well she’d probably made every faction of the Assembly cringe at least a little. Her dress might have been in pastels, but she had a knob of a chin and a jutting pointed nose, her eyes dark and deep-set. Her coarse wavy hair was a mix of gray and white, but I could tell from a few flecks still remaining that it had once been a dark mahogany brown. I guessed from the lines on her face and the slight stiffness with which she walked that she was in her sixties and a little worse for wear.

  “My mysterious anonymous friend?” she said, looking me up and down.

  I hadn’t given her my name or any identifying details in case the Assembly had been monitoring her. “Yes. Ms. Elands?”

  She waved that name off. “Margo is fine. What can I do for you, dear? I take it this isn’t just about you wanting something from the shop.”

  “It’s not,” I said. “Although—has everything been all right? When I saw the shop was closed, I couldn’t help worrying.”

  She shrugged. “I’m starting to get a little arthritis in my joints. Sometimes it acts up enough to be a problem, and I take a couple days to rest. I don’t get so many regulars at the shop that it usually disturbs anyone.”

  “Well, nothing suspicious about that,” Philomena said. “You were worried for nothing.”

  A breath of relief rushed out of me. Nothing I’d done had gotten Margo into any trouble. Assuming this meeting didn’t.

  I resisted the urge to glance over at my guys. If she hadn’t already noticed me arriving with them, it was probably better not to draw her attention to them.

  Her eyes had already sharpened anyway. “What exactly did you think might have happened to me?”

  “Well, I…” I rubbed my mouth. There wasn’t an easy way to put this. “The best I can explain it is I’ve gotten into some trouble with the Assembly. Or at least part of the Assembly that’s dealing out their own justice without anyone else knowing much about it. I know you’ve had some… issues with the more conservative members in the past?”

  Margo’s sturdy body had stiffened. “They didn’t like some of the things I dug up and talked about from our past. That’s why I’m living out here and not in Seattle the last twenty years. Can’t say I miss them much. But you don’t want to mess with them, young witch. I promise you, you don’t.”

  “Vaguely foreboding,” Phil said, wrinkling her nose. “Not very helpful, madam.”

  I didn’t have any humor left after that warning. Tension wrapped around my chest. “I don’t want to mess with them. But they seem set on messing with me. I just want them to back off. I was hoping maybe from your time there, from dealing with them, you might have some advice on how to maneuver around them, or find their weak spots, or—”

  Margo was shaking her head. “I don’t want to get mixed up in this,” she said, taking a step back. “I didn’t come out too badly from the trouble I got into. I’d like to keep what I still have.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I said quickly. “I wouldn’t ask you to stick your neck out. After you leave the park, you can forget you ever saw me. It’s just, if there’s anything you could say that might help…”

  A pleading note had crept into my voice. I winced inwardly at it. But Margo hesitated.

  “They’re not all bad, you know,” she said. “I had plenty of friends in the Assembly. It just doesn’t do much good when the ones who crack the whip have their heads on backward. You want them off your tail? That’s all?”

  I nodded. “I’d disappear from witching society, just keep to myself and stay away, if they’d let me.”

  She sighed. “Well, I can tell you this much: If your spark is kindled, you’d better keep your magic to yourself. They’ve refined the art of tracing magicking at a distance over the years. And not just that magic was worked but by who, as if you’ve left your signature on it. You cast a spell, and they’ll know your general area. Cast a couple more, and they’ll pinpoint you exactly. I’d imagine that’s how they’ve followed you so far. You want to disappear? You keep that power under wraps.”

  She gave me a sharp bob of her head and turned. “Thank you!” I called after her as she hurried off. My throat had gone tight.

  The enforcers could trace my magicking. Then every spell I’d cast to build our shield, to enchant our pendants, to heal my consorts in the last few days—I’d been drawing our enemies to us every time.

  Could I possibly keep us far enough ahead of them to wait them out now without casting a single spell?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rose

  Gabriel pulled the SUV into the lot at the fringes of the suburban park. I peered from the window at the stretch of manicured grass and flower beds, the paths winding elegantly between the trees. A lot more upkeep went into this place than the park where I’d met Margo.

  We were north of New York City proper now, among neighborhoods of huge houses with sprawling lawns and more golf courses than I could count. Closer to the kind of society I’d grown up in, but I couldn’t say I felt all that comfortable.

  I turned to look at Kyler, who was watching his phone in the seat behind me. “Anything?”

  He shook his head. “No one in your mom’s family has reached out to anyone at the Assembly since you contacted them. It’s all just innocuous stuff like continuing text conversations with local friends. I don’t see any indication that your aunt has told anyone else that you got in touch.”

  I let out my breath, wishing my nerves weren’t jumping so much. Gabriel reached over and rested a reassuring hand on my arm.

  “You’ve done everything you can to keep the Assembly off our backs,” he said. “Nothing we’ve done should have tipped them off, right?”

  “Right.” As soon as I’d returned from my chat with Margo, I’d reworked the spells on our pendants so that the magic on them wouldn’t activate unless I prompted it, which meant there shouldn’t be anything to trace in the meantime. Then I’d magicked up a sort of illusion, a spell that would travel to the southwest, away from here, bleeding hints of magic as it went. I didn’t know how long the energy I’d given it would keep it going, but for a day or two at least I could hope our enemies would think we’d left New York and follow that.

  And in case they’d guessed that I might reach out to my family while I was here, we’d figured out a whole system of precautions for approaching my younger aunt, Virginia. We’d couriered her a prepaid phone Ky had hacked and installed with a tracking app, and a brief letter explaining the barest essentials of who I was and why we had to be careful communicating. She’d used that phone to set up this meeting with me.

  I’d picked a park for that meeting inspired by Margo, but now all that wide open space was making me feel edgy.

  “If we see any reason at all to worry, we’ll alert you,” Seth said.

  I nodded, patting my own prepaid phone in my pocket. But if an attack came too fast, I wouldn’t have time to activate their protective pendants.
The inherent magic on our consort bonds would protect them a little—and I could send more power through that in an instant—but I couldn’t rely on their next attack being a mild one. And that connection didn’t help Gabriel at all.

  I lay my hand over Gabriel’s for a moment. Then I got up and leaned between the seats, reaching to the other guys. Jin and Damon moved forward from the back seat so all four of them could clasp hands with me in turn. I didn’t need any magic to feel the hum of affection in the car.

  “You need us, you shout,” Damon said.

  “And you’ll be there, guns blazing?” I teased.

  His expression tensed a little even at my light tone. The altercation yesterday morning was still bothering him. Maybe I’d have a chance to talk to him alone about it later, if he let me.

  “She’s almost here,” Ky announced. He was following the signal from my aunt’s phone via his app.

  “Okay. I’d better go. I’ll be back soon.”

  I shot them all one last nervous smile and headed out. The door shut behind me with a thud.

  Outside, the sky was clear but the air more crisp than yesterday. It had just enough of a cool edge to sharpen my senses as I ambled down one of the paths to the small wooden gazebo where Virginia and I had agreed to meet.

  The rumble of a car engine pulling into the lot reached my ears just as I climbed the steps. I sat down on one of the benches inside and forced my hands not to fidget.

  It wasn’t just the Assembly I was nervous about. I was going to meet one of my mom’s sisters for the first time I could remember, maybe the first time ever. I still didn’t know how much they’d shut us out of their lives and how much it’d been my dad’s doing. What was she going to make of me and this whole crazy situation?

  Maybe she’d take off like Margo had as soon as she realized just how far in over my head I was. I couldn’t even blame her if she did. We might be family by blood, but in every other way we were strangers. She didn’t owe me anything, not really.

  I just had to hope that blood and long-ago memories would be enough to offset the danger I might be putting her and the rest of the family in. If the Levesques couldn’t help us… I had no idea who else we could turn to.

  Footsteps rasped along the path. I stood up and turned to face her.

  The tall slim woman approaching the gazebo had her black hair woven into a braid that formed a loose loop at the back of her head. The breeze fluttered through her airy silk dress, making the watercolor print of lilies on a pond seem to come alive. She came to a stop at the base of the steps, and for several seconds we just stared at each other.

  Virginia looked like an older but softer version of my mother—at least, what I knew of my mother from the few photos I had of her. A sudden ache filled my heart at the thought of the framed photograph in my bedroom back in the home I wasn’t sure I could ever return to.

  Smile lines framed my aunt’s eyes, and her chin and nose were more rounded than Mom’s sharp features, which I’d mostly inherited. Her eyes were a lighter green. But I could see our family line written in her face so clearly I’d have recognized her even if we’d simply happened to pass each other on the street.

  I guessed similar thoughts were racing through her head, because when she opened her mouth, the first thing she said was, “By the Spark, you are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you. It’s like going back in time twenty years.”

  My throat choked up a little. I pushed myself to my feet. “Aunt Virginia?”

  A smile dawned on her face. “Ginny,” she said. “That’s what Alora—your mother—always called me. What pretty much everyone in the family calls me. And you’re obviously Rose.”

  I didn’t know what to do with myself—with my hands, with my mouth. I stepped back to give Ginny room to come up the stairs. She sat down across from me, so I sat back down too, my pulse jittering.

  “I’m sorry to drop into your life out of nowhere, and all the subterfuge—I didn’t want to create any trouble for you,” I said.

  Ginny shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s— I’ve felt guilty for a long time that we weren’t able to find a better way to reach out to you, after Lora… My parents had a lot of suspicions about her death, you know. Whether the illness was completely natural. They’d already raised concerns about the speed of the consorting and marriage. When the Assembly ruled against them your father was able to file a no-contact order. None of us were to try to get in touch with him or you.”

  So Dad had lied about that too. The lump in my throat hardened. He’d told me my whole life that my mother’s family had wanted nothing to do with us, when he’d forced them to stay away.

  “I had no idea,” I said. “I mean, he told me that your family hadn’t approved of the marriage, but he made it sound as if you’d shut us out, not the other way around.”

  “Well, of course. Why would he have wanted to admit why he’d done it?”

  “Am I going to get you in trouble with the Assembly just by being here?” I asked. “I’m making you violate that order.”

  She shrugged, her smile turning wry. “If they find out, I can always say in my defense that you came to me. But you seem to be going to a lot of work to make sure they don’t find out. What’s going on, Rose? What kind of trouble are you in?”

  It was such a long story, and so much of it I wasn’t sure I could trust her or the rest of the family with yet. They might have wanted to be a part of my life, but I had no idea how they’d feel about the idea of taking an unsparked man as a consort, or taking multiple consorts, let alone both. They might decide I was some kind of deviant, corrupted by my father somehow, and send me back to the Assembly. So I had to tread carefully.

  The root of it all, at least, didn’t reflect on me in any unpleasant ways. “It’s—it’s complicated. And telling you the whole thing might put you in danger, just knowing it. You shouldn’t tell anyone else, not even in the family, not yet. And I won’t tell you at all if you don’t want to take the risk. I’d totally understand—”

  Aunt Ginny held up her hand to stop me. “I’ve spent more than twenty years holding my tongue and pretending I didn’t have a niece out there to avoid the Assembly coming down on me. I think it’s about time I stuck my neck out, now that you’ve come all this way.”

  She said it so plainly and firmly that a little of the hesitation in me melted away.

  “I was supposed to be consorted,” I said. “Just this month. But I found out that my father had made an arrangement with my consort-to-be that the ceremony would be distorted so that I wouldn’t be able to use my magic without his permission, and I’d have to use it if he ordered me to.” It was simpler not to mention my stepmother’s role in the whole thing, now that she was gone anyway.

  Ginny’s face had turned sallow. “That’s awful.”

  I twisted my hands together in my lap. “I… took measures to make sure that didn’t happen. But it turns out that Dad had backing from some faction in the Assembly. They want to prosecute me for what I did to defend myself, and they’d let him and my former fiancé get off free. I swear to you, I didn’t hurt anyone, or do anything that puts the witching community in danger. But they want to cover up what happened, I guess, and their own involvement. I’ve only uncovered a little, but it sounds like there are other witches they’ve trapped in similar ways.”

  “Your mother,” my aunt said, her voice a little ragged. “We hadn’t heard from her in over a year. We thought your father had completely convinced her that we were the enemy, trying to tear them apart. But then I got this letter saying something about how he wanted to take her power… It didn’t really make sense, and it was from when she was sick. Our parents used it as evidence after she died, but the Assembly’s court dismissed it as hallucination. Maybe it wasn’t, though.”

  To take her power. How could Dad have done that back then? His messages with Frankford had indicated that the binding he’d had my stepmother work out was a new strategy they hadn’t tried before. What had the
y used to manipulate witches in the past? And had they really been doing it for that long?

  What for? Celestine had said they wanted to control me because of how much power I’d had. Both the Hallowell line and the Levesque’s were strong magically, and the two combined… I’d seen for myself now how much power I could wield already. But Dad couldn’t have used that excuse with my mother. What would he have done with her magic—what had he done? Had the Assembly known even then?

  All those unanswerable questions condensed in my stomach, leaving me queasy. Ginny leaned across the gazebo and gripped my hand. “They can’t keep getting away with this. We can’t let them. Anything I can do to keep you safe, you just let me know.”

  Tears burned in the back of my eyes. I wanted so badly to trust her, to spill the whole story and be wrapped up in the protection of a family who really would have my back. But it wasn’t just me who needed safety. And she wasn’t the only one on her side of the equation either. There were too many factors for me to risk diving in headfirst.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m still figuring out where to go from here. Can you give me a little time to think about what I’d need? And then I’ll reach out to you again.”

  “Of course,” Ginny said. “Take whatever time you need. Just don’t hesitate if you think of anything.”

  I held her gaze intently for a moment. “And can you promise you won’t mention me or anything I told you to anyone else in the family, just for now? The more people know, the more likely the wrong people could find out I’m here…”

  “Of course. Of course. Don’t you worry about that for a second.”

  She got up, and I stood too. The second I was on my feet, she opened her arms, offering a hug without pushing it on me. I blinked hard and stepped into her embrace. Just for an instant, it felt almost as if I’d found my mother again.