Not-Me sprang out of the way with an alien hiss, clearing the blast with room to spare. The chair disintegrated, leaving not so much as a speck of ash behind, and Not-Me threw out a blast of her own, albeit weaker, at Maddock.
Maddock deflected it with his bare hand, but it gave Not-Me the opportunity to jump him, transforming as she went into a black-skinned humanoid with a long, forked tongue and cloven hooves.
Maddock twisted away from the Definitely-Not-Me’s wickedly sharp claws and raised his hand, probably to blast it again. But I had already drawn my gun from my purse, and I squeezed off a shot, aiming for the thing’s head. The gun kicked in my hand, and the creature let out a shriek as the wooden stake ripped through the side of its neck, leaving a nasty-looking hole.
Damn, I thought as I watched the hole close up. I should have loaded up with iron beforehand.
Thankfully, the shot was enough to scare the thing away. It dodged another blast from Maddock, then flung itself through the front door and disappeared.
“Bloody unseelie scum,” Maddock growled, stalking toward the door.
For a moment, I thought he was going to chase it, but he simply slammed the door shut, then knelt down and pressed his hands to the base of the wall. He muttered a series of strange words that sent weird sensations through my body, and a series of runes flared to life, racing along the bottom of the wall and around the entire room. Some kind of protection spell, maybe?
“Umm, hello?” I waved my arms in the air, trying to get his attention. “You wanna tell me what the fuck that was all about?”
“In a minute.”
I gnashed my teeth, but Maddock ignored me, walking a perimeter around the room and then leaving it, presumably to check the rest of the house. I would have followed him, but he flung out a hand and told me to stay where I was. And whether it was because enough strange shit had happened to me or because I was just too damn tired, I listened.
Sighing, I flung myself down on one of the couches, staring at the birds twittering above me. They weren’t any kind I’d ever seen before—their feathers glittered like jewels in a variety of colors, and they had glowing eyes I was pretty sure no species on Earth did.
I turned onto my side so I could study the room, and as my nose brushed against one of the pillows, I caught a strong whiff of Maddock’s smoky-sweet scent. My body stilled as I considered the implications of that. If this pillow smelled like Maddock, that meant he spent a lot of time here.
Footsteps thudded in the hall, and I lifted my head to see Maddock stalking into the room, looking right pissed. His dark eyebrows were drawn together in a thunderous scowl, and he leveled a glare at me that could have reduced a mountain to dust.
Thankfully, I was made of stronger stuff.
“What the hell are you looking at me like that for?” I demanded, rising to my feet. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Really?” Maddock sneered, not slowing down one bit. I reached for my weapon, but he’d already backed me into the wall. His big body radiated such intense fury that I actually started to sweat.
“Ye dinnae think that running off into the woods by yerself, instead of coming to me to get my help with whatever it was that caught yer attention, is wrong?”
“So you could help me, or so you could stop me?” The words exploded from my mouth with child-like belligerence, and my cheeks burned with embarrassment. But I plowed on. “I thought about going back for you, but I wanted answers—something you seem hard-pressed to give me. And before you go acting like I shouldn’t have done that, I’ll remind you that my shot slowed that thing down. I didn’t need you. Now, tell me what’s going on, so maybe next time I can trust you enough to ask for your help. What is this house? What was that thing? How did you know to find me here?”
Maddock’s scowl deepened, but there was a flicker of emotion in his eyes that told me my point had been made and would not be refuted.
“The creature ye encountered is called a phoukas,” Maddock spat. “It’s a type of unseelie that can mimic the forms of certain creatures, usually humans and a select number of beasts. As for the house…this is my home.”
“Your home?” Stunned, I looked around again. The place was stunningly beautiful—completely at odds with the brutally suave fae club owner I thought I was coming to know. “Why do you live here instead of in Salem?”
“I spend many of my nights at the club these days, but this place has been my home for a long time, and I’m rather…fond of it.” Maddock’s jaw clenched. “Somebody managed to disable the wards without it alerting me, and they used magic to lead ye right to it.”
“If it helps, I knew I was being led on. That’s not exactly the kind of thing that stops me—I usually just find a way to work the situation to my advantage, which I would have done on my own. I’m guessing the ‘somebody’ responsible here wasn’t the phoukas?” I asked pointedly. “I mean, that thing doesn’t look like it’s incredibly intelligent.”
“It’s not, and it could never have done this,” Maddock growled. “Likely, it was whoever carved that symbol into the tree down by the stream. I just dinnae understand how they knew ye were going to be here.” He let out a disgusted sigh, then eased back, giving me some breathing room. “This isn’t the first time the unseelie have sent someone after me, but it’s usually not something so insignificant as a phoukas. They must be changing their tactics. But why?”
“Maybe start with why was it disguised to look like me,” I demanded. “How did it even know about me? Are the unseelie watching me now, too? What did you drag me into, Maddock?”
“I doubt ye would be on their radar,” Maddock said dryly. “The phoukas simply pulled a memory from the house in order to choose its guise. It was likely trying to throw me off.”
“A…a memory? Of me? Here?” I spluttered. “But I’ve never been here before!”
“Ye have, unfortunately, been here before.” Maddock’s eyes tightened, and he looked away. “A very, very long time ago.”
“What, you mean like when I was a baby?” I asked, half-sarcastic, but my heart thumped a little. Was it possible that Maddock actually did know me as a child? Had he known my parents? What could he tell me about them?
“No.” A disgusted expression crossed Maddock’s face as he closed the distance between us again. His long fingers clenched around my jaw as he tilted my face up to his.
“What the fuck!” I punched him in the gut, and it was like sucker punching a brick wall. One-hundred percent ineffective, and I came perilously close to breaking my knuckles.
“I didna want to do this again, but it’s the easiest way to show ye,” Maddock growled, and then he crushed his mouth against mine.
At first, my senses were overwhelmed by him—his heather and woodsmoke scent; the spicy-sweet taste of his mouth; the weight of his big body pressing mine into the wall—but all that was abruptly replaced by a vision…or rather, a memory.
“Yes. More.” Shocked, I watched myself beg, lying naked on satin sheets, through the eyes of someone above me. Someone inside me.
My tousled silver hair was spread across the pillow, my cheeks were flushed, and my hands were gripping the shaking headboard so hard my knuckles were turning white.
“Harder!” I moaned, letting go of the headboard and reaching down between my legs. The man above me groaned, a low, animalistic sound, and a thrill shot through me as I realized I was hearing Maddock’s voice.
How was that possible? There’s no way I would have forgotten something like this.
But the memory was part of me. And even though I was viewing myself from Maddock’s eyes, I could feel every sensation rippling through me-then’s body, could witness each moment in a way I could never deny as truth.
Maddock’s fingers curled around my rib cage, his fingertips digging into my skin. It was passionate, not aggressive, but he didn’t know his own strength. Still, his bruising grip was a nearly imperceptible feeling beneath his powerful thrusts.
The arou
sal building inside me was unlike anything I’d experienced before, almost like magic. Hell, it probably was magic. Some kind of preternatural fuck magic—a mind-warping, skin-buzzing, simmering spell that had me on the verge of explosion but somehow held me there, begging this man for more.
Certain I was about to shatter completely from the pleasure, a panic fluttered through my chest at the thought of him stopping. The me-then bit into his shoulder, apparently believing that would get a reaction.
It did.
Maddock pulled my hair, his urgency rising to meet my frenzied need for completion. Something came over me as the magical sensation sparked over every nerve cell in my body, shifting my moan into something more primal as I came, screaming his name. Moments later, the Maddock from the vision groaned again, burying his face in the crook of my shoulder as he found his release.
The memory shifted then, moving so that I could see both of us lying in a hand-carved wooden bed that was fit for a king. It was strange, watching my hands stroke his broad back, brushing droplets of sweat away as every muscle in his body relaxed. As Maddock’s eyes closed, a strange mix of tenderness and sadness filled my eyes, and then they hardened with what looked like determination.
My hands continued stroking Maddock’s back, but they took on a faint blue glow. The more they stroked, the brighter the glow grew, until my entire body was engulfed in the strange energy.
I gasped as I began to see a pattern—the energy was wafting up from Maddock’s body…and into mine.
“No!” Maddock’s eyes flew open as he growled the word. His big body shuddered, and he braced himself using his knuckles, trying to rise. But whatever I was doing to him left him too weak, and he collapsed on top of me again, helpless against whatever voodoo I was performing on him.
When I was done, his tanned skin had taken on an ashy tint, and I was resplendent with power. Smiling, I pushed him off me as if he weighed nothing, then sauntered over to a chair on the other side of the room, where a blue velvet dress and some lacy undergarments were draped.
The same blue dress I’d seen myself wearing in the other vision.
“Bitch…” Maddock croaked, his body still trembling. The fury radiating off him was palpable, but he couldn’t do more than shift his head to glare at me. “I’ll kill ye the next time I see yer bloody face.”
“Don’t be so angry, darling.” I pulled the dress over my head. It was really strange to hear myself speaking with a Colonial accent. “We both know you were using me, and now it’s my turn to use you. I need your power for something important, and besides, it isn’t as if you won’t regenerate it. A week of bed rest and some chicken soup, and you’ll be just fine.”
I winked as I tied a bonnet over my silver curls and slipped my feet into elegant slippers. A coat came on next, and then I headed for the door.
“I wilna…forget this…” Maddock gasped, still struggling to move from the bed.
I turned back to face him, profound sadness weighing down my features. “I know. But at least I can take comfort in the fact that if I succeed, you and I will both live on to remember this. Even if you do hate me for the rest of your eternity.”
The vision broke, and Maddock shoved away from me, his chest heaving. He glared at me, but the anger in his eyes was tempered with confusion.
He snarled. “How did ye do that?”
“W…what?” I was still gasping for breath, still reeling from what I’d seen. “How did I do what?”
A muscle beneath Maddock’s left eye twitched. “You tampered with the memory. You changed it.”
“How the fuck could I have done that?” I cried. “How would I even know what to change, since I’ve never seen it before?”
“I dinnae know!” Maddock snapped, raking a hand through his dark hair. He cut his gaze away from me, looking like he wanted to break something. “But that last bit…yer parting shot… I dinnae remember that. I’ve never remembered that. It didn’t happen.”
“As far as I’ve always known, none of this has ever happened!” Fed up, I stalked toward him, curled my fist into his collar and yanked his head down to face me. I was done letting him push me around; let’s see how he liked it for a change. “Are you telling me that we used to be lovers several hundred years ago? Because that can’t possibly be true. I was born twenty-three years ago, Tremaine. I didn’t live in colonial times. That vision you showed me—it’s a woman who looks remarkably like me, but it’s not me. It’s got to be a phoukas or something.”
My voice wobbled a little, and I pressed my lips together. I was not going to panic over this.
“The woman in that vision is ye.” Maddock’s hand clamped around my wrist, yanking it away from his collar. “Ye went by Veronica Moussall at that time, and ye were a mystery, not a phoukas. Believe me, I would know. Ye were a member of the Sisterhood of the Forgotten—one of the five ruling witch clans in the area of that time—and yet ye were something more, different somehow. I thought that perhaps if I could seduce ye, I could unravel yer secrets. I thought ye might be the key to helping me regain my power.”
“Regain your power?” I frowned, looking him up and down. “You look plenty powerful to me.” No, I hadn’t seen Maddock use much of his magic, but the confidence and energy rolled off him in abundant waves. He’d said that he was put in charge of this entire sector by the Seelie Court, which had to mean he was powerful. The idea that he was somehow diminished, that he’d once been even stronger, even more dangerous, chilled my spine.
“Aye, but my strength is not what it once was.” Maddock dropped my hand, a muscle in his jaw clenching. I’d never seen him so agitated. “As I mentioned before, my kind cannae be truly killed—we reincarnate after we are vanquished. But it takes a very long time, and we lose some of our magic every time it happens. I have lived for millennia, and have been reincarnated more times than I can count.” His narrowed gaze turned back to me. “The fae have long searched for an answer to this affliction, but we’ve yet to find it.”
I let out a soft laugh. “I see. So you tried to seduce me, thinking you could use me to get your power back, and instead I took yours.” I shook my head in wonder. “Sounds like you’re a sore loser, Tremaine.”
Maddock’s eyes flashed at that. “Excuse me?”
“You tried to use me, and instead I used you.” I folded my arms across my chest and stared up at him. “And because you’re a chauvinistic male, you’re still butt-hurt about it after…what? A hundred years? Two hundred?”
“Over three hundred years,” he growled.
I paused as something occurred to me. “If I’m reincarnated, does that make me fae?” I looked down at my hands—my ordinary, oh-so human hands. Was I really part of a race of such extraordinary beings?
“What ye are, as I said, is a mystery.” Maddock’s expression was stony as he regarded me. “Fae don’t reincarnate as quickly as you have. It’s unprecedented. Besides, the way that you stole my power…that’s something only a witch can do.”
“Right…” I said, recalling what he’d said back at the mill. “It’s how they fuel their magic. I get that. But it’s not something I would do.”
Maddock pressed his lips together, agitation darkening his gaze. “It’s certainly something you did, though.”
I shuddered, remembering the boy with the ram’s horns I’d seen in my vision at the mill, and how emaciated he’d looked. Cold horror filled me at the thought of more fae like him chained up in a dark cavern somewhere, reduced to little more as a battery for a group of power-hungry supernaturals. “What they’re doing to your people is horrible.”
“It is.” Maddock glared at me again. “Much more horrible than what you did to me.”
I huffed. “According to that memory you showed me, I seemed to have had a good reason for taking your magic. In fact, it sounded a lot like a life and death thing to me.”
“Indeed.” Maddock didn’t sound impressed. “You seem to have a knack of attracting those sorts of things. I meant to
show you a second memory…the one of the last time we met, before we broke apart.”
“Oh?” A nervous tremor rippled through me. “And what memory was that?”
“I was at the Seelie Court, returned after a long spell away, and I found out they were holding ye there. They wouldn’t tell me why, but I gathered that ye’d destroyed something of ours, something powerful enough to merit an execution. They refused to let me speak to you despite my status, but I went to the execution, and ye spotted me as you were led up to the platform.” Maddock’s eyes glimmered as he spoke, and if I didn’t know better, I could have sworn I saw sadness in them. “Ye looked me in the eye as they lowered you onto the chopping block and told me ye would see me again. Ye also told me that when that day came, things would get even darker.”
“That’s just crazy,” I said, rolling my eyes now. “You’re making me sound like some kind of prophet or something.”
Sure, I had a strange talent, but the idea that I was some kind of powerful, witch-like creature with the ability to reincarnate was bat-shit crazy no matter how you looked at it.
“Do you want me to show you?” Maddock taunted. “Because I assure you, the memory is real.” He reached for me again.
“No!” I sidestepped him. “Umm, no, thanks. I don’t really have any desire to watch myself get beheaded.”
“You were slain with a spear through the chest.”
“Fantastic.” I glared at him, easing my hip onto an armchair. “Anything else you’d care to share?”
“No. But I will say this.” Maddock’s face turned stony again. “Ye had better be ready for what’s coming, because if yer premonition was accurate, our lives are about to become more hellish than ever. And I’ve lived a long time, Detective. Long enough to know that if something has the capability to scare me, it might just have the capability to end the world.”
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