by Selena Scott
“Well,” Celia said logically. “They are apparently attempting to do some crazy shifter magic thingy that we know nothing about and can’t help with, so… maybe he’s got a point.”
Tre shifted his attention to Caroline who was biting her lip and still holding Arturo’s hand. She didn’t look like she wanted to leave his side. Tre restrained the low growl of frustration in the back of his throat. “Caroline, love, you’ve gotta go too, okay?” He stepped forward and placed his fingers on her shoulder, accidentally tangling them in her hair.
Caroline rose and faced Tre. “Just promise me you won’t hurt him, okay?”
Frustration and annoyance stabbed through Tre. He took a deep breath and gentled his voice before he spoke out loud. Being irritated with Caroline was like cursing out a baby. “We’re gonna do the best we can.”
Caroline let Celia tug her from the room, but she kept sending worried glances back over her shoulder, her chestnut hair tumbling everywhere and her honey brown eyes the size of half dollars.
Martine still stood under the window. She was a shifter as well. A natural-born hawk shifter. She was also a badass demon hunter and all of them understood that she wasn’t included in the order to leave the room. She was the one who’d trained the boys to hone their gifts, after all.
“How the hell are we gonna do this?” Jack asked, scratching at the blond stubble on his chin.
“We’re trying to break his connection with the demon, right? Well, he’s got a connection with us, too…” Jean Luc spoke slowly. He was trying to piece it together as he went. “You think we can use that to sort of, you know, tug him back in our direction?”
“I don’t know,” Martine said. “You’ll be putting his emotions in sort of a tug of war situation then.”
“You don’t think he can withstand it?” Tre asked her. She was, after all, the resident expert on all things demon-related.
“I… don’t know. Honestly, I’ve never been in a situation even remotely like this before.” She pushed off from the window and strode over to Arturo. Her palm landed on his forehead, pushing his hair back and seeking to take his temperature. She sighed. “But I know Arturo. And he’s strong. Trust me. I’ve been battling with him for centuries. The bastard just won’t die.”
Tre couldn’t help but smile at the annoyed tone of her voice. “Then I think that’s the best plan we’ve got.”
Arturo twisted in pain, his eyes fluttering open and then closed. His tan face blanched, going dead white.
“Shall we, boys?” Jack asked, sighing and tossing his gray baseball cap to the side. The three of them came to stand together.
With their eyes closed and their feelings extended in a way that none of them would have dreamed of a few months ago. They reached out for Arturo.
The only indication that they’d gotten him was a searing pain, as if they’d picked up a hot pan from the stove. Cacophonous screeching filled their ears. If Tre had known how the hell to get away from the burn of it, he would have. But Jack and Jean Luc were there with him. They were holding on to him just as tightly.
They could feel the parts of him that were human, and then there, in the darkness, was the tether that held Arturo to the demon. It was a horrible, reptilian connection. Cold-blooded and evil. It was like an umbilical cord wrapped around Arturo’s humanity.
“Come on,” Tre muttered through gritted teeth. “Come with us.”
He couldn’t see anything but black, but he could feel Arturo’s struggle. To disconnect from the demon would be like ripping off a limb. An evil, horrifying limb, but a limb nonetheless.
Tre and Jack and Jean Luc could all feel the heat of one another’s shoulders, they fed off the intensity and concentration of each of the brothers beside them. This was unlike anything that they’d ever done before. Yet here they were.
Tre’s teeth clenched when he felt the tiniest bit of give. As if Arturo were testing the bonds of the demon, yanking himself toward them just a touch. The three men jumped on the opportunity, clamping down on their psychic connection with Arturo, as they tug-of-warred him back their way.
“You have to come with us,” Tre grated out, unsure if it was in his head or out loud. “We’ll tear you in two if you don’t let go.”
And it was those words, it seemed, that finally released Arturo from the demon’s grip. As if Arturo’s psyche had clamped down onto the demon so long ago and with such strength, that he hadn’t known how to let go. But let go he did.
The men breathed huge, gasping gulps of air as one by one, their eyes came open. It seemed so strange, after all of that, to open their eyes to Arturo’s bedroom. He lay still and pale on the bed, the sheets soaked with sweat beneath him.
As they watched, he drew a great breath, and some of the pain left his face. It seemed that he truly slept now.
CHAPTER TWO
Caroline waited with the rest of the group for the boys to do whatever it was they were doing in that room with Arturo. At this point, she didn’t think anything would have surprised her. But plenty delighted her. She’d never had more fun or felt more alive in her entire life than she had the past two months. It thrilled her deeply to see the boys use their newfound magic. It thrilled her even more deeply to see them truly start to work together.
Thea sat on the couch in the living room, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. Celia paced from one side of the room to the other, her hands deep in the pockets of her high-waisted jeans. Caroline could tell that they were both worried about their men in there, doing whatever kind of telepathy kung fu they were doing.
Caroline was definitely worried about their boys. But she couldn’t help but be worried for Arturo as well. He was in so much pain, obviously. And she’d never been able to watch a living creature endure pain. It just wasn’t who she was. She knew better than to say anything about Arturo right now, though. It was best to just keep her mouth shut.
A very sweaty, exhausted-looking Jack stumbled through the archway of the living room and Thea shot to her feet.
“It’s alright,” Jack said, instantly soothing her worries. “We think we did it. Severed the tie between Arturo and the demon. Whether or not he’s going to survive it remains to be seen.”
Caroline shot to her feet and strode to Arturo’s room. She ran directly into Tre’s chest as she tried to push through the door. His shirt was sweaty and clinging to him in places. His two large hands clamped onto her shoulders. “Where are you going?”
“To check on Arturo.”
“He needs rest, Caroline. There’s nothing we can do right now. Besides, Martine is going to stay with him.”
Caroline peeked over Tre’s shoulder and, indeed, saw Martine mopping at Arturo’s pale forehead with a rag. She didn’t get more of a look than that original peek, though, because Tre continued that inexorable push at her shoulders, steering her backwards away from the room.
“Okay, okay,” Caroline said, turning to face front. “I won’t bother them. I’ll wait until I’m needed.”
Her shoulders slumped a little as Tre let her go. She didn’t stop walking until she was in the confines of her own room, the door closed behind her.
She was always in the way. Even when she wanted to be helping. Sometimes it seemed that she was in the way especially when she was trying to help. She hated that feeling. She’d spent so many years rambling around her house in Massachusetts, nothing to do but watch the cleaning ladies polish the immaculately designed furniture. Or watch the gardener weed the gorgeous flower gardens. Or spy on their housekeeper while she made three meals a day for them. Caroline had been of absolutely no use to anyone. Especially to her husband, Peter, who hadn’t even needed her for wifely reasons. He’d had other women for that.
“Ex-husband,” she whispered to herself. “Ex.”
She’d sent the signed papers in two weeks ago. She was no longer Mrs. Caroline Clifton. Now she was Ms. Caroline Clifton, thank you very much. She wondered what she’d do with her last name. She’d been a Clifton for eight
years, it seemed strange to change it now.
She heard the group moving about the old, rickety farmhouse, probably about to prepare dinner. Caroline was tempted to go down and help, but she feared getting pushed away again, getting told that she wasn’t needed. So instead she padded over to the creaky double bed she’d been sleeping in. She flopped down and kicked off her neat little flats.
She loved this bedroom, with its intricate lace duvet and whitewashed walls. Everything was white on white in this guest room, except for the paintings on the walls, gray and blue misty shapes that perfectly captured the view of the mountain range outside her window. When Thea had shown Caroline to the room, she’d told her that her grandfather had painted those pictures.
This was her favorite of all the places they’d stayed so far. The air was dry and hot during the afternoons, cool at night. And the quiet, good Lord, the quiet! It was an alive sort of quiet, filled with ambient life. She loved it.
Her phone chirped on the nightstand and Caroline rolled over immediately. Another Tinder notification. Yay!
Ever since she’d signed her divorce papers, Caroline had been Tindering her ass off, and man, was it fun.
Though she’d been a dud of a wife, apparently she was viewed on Tinder as quite a catch, because she had pretty constant attention from the male species. She opened up the app and saw that she had unread messages from sixteen different men. Some of them were continued conversations that she’d already started and some of them were new.
With a little smile on her face, Caroline started texting back.
“Blech,” Caroline winced and immediately deleted two different sets of unsolicited dick pics. But c’est la vie! She moved right on and replied to the more gentlemanly men in the group. If she had to say so herself, she was getting pretty good at flirting.
Which was a huge relief to her because Peter had been pretty much immune to any attempts she’d made at flirting. Some days she could barely get him to look up from his phone, no matter what she did or said, no matter what she was, or wasn’t, wearing. It had supremely shaken her confidence.
Her phone buzzed in her hand and it was a number that she didn’t recognize. She thought nothing of answering.
“Hello?”
“Caroline.”
“Peter! Oh. Your number is different.” After so many months of silence, it was strange to hear his voice.
“Yeah. Listen, Caroline, my lawyer just contacted me. I thought I should let you know that everything went well. The papers are filed.”
“We’re divorced.” Her voice was quiet, not from pain or sadness, but more from the slow, strange acclimation to a new life. She was still getting used to all this. She was learning how to be divorced from Peter when they were living completely different lives. But talking to him on the phone and being divorced from him suddenly seemed like a completely different set of skills.
“Correct.” There was silence on the line for a minute. “Listen, I want to buy you out of the Swampscott house.”
“I—what?” She’d known that was a possibility, but to actually hear him say that he wanted to give her money to never return to the house she’d lived in for the last eight years was very strange indeed.
He cleared his throat. “I want to own it, Caroline. I want to live there.”
“By yourself.”
He cleared his throat. “With Courtney.”
“Courtney is your… girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“And you wanna live in the Swampscott house with her.”
“Yes.”
But you never wanted to live there with me. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Caroline had told herself that Peter used to stay so often in his condo in Boston proper because he hadn’t liked the drafty, modern glass monstrosity on the bluff any more than she had. The house was too cold and impersonal. To design-y, not homey. But turned out, he liked the house fine. It was her that he hadn’t wanted to live with. She took a long breath.
“Okay. Whatever you want to pay me for it is fine. It’s yours. I just… I don’t want to have to do anything on my end. Just take care of it.”
She knew he would. Peter was always taking care of things neatly and efficiently. Just not her. He never took care of her.
“Oh.” He was surprised by her immediate acquiescence about her place of residence. He cleared his throat. “Alright. I’ll get it straightened out with Gary over the next few weeks. And I’ll let you know when it’s all done.”
She didn’t know who Gary was, but she expected he was some lawyer or realtor or banker or someone she’d been introduced to before. She knew that asking Peter would irritate him, so she just hummed her agreement to the plan. He wouldn’t cheat her out of money. That much she knew.
He would never leave a paper trail of his antipathy toward her.
“Caroline,” he said slowly, like he was speaking to someone with a fresh head injury. “You’ll have to be out of the house as soon as possible. I’ll send movers over, they can even help you pack—”
“I’m already moved out.” Caroline gaped in surprise at the white-washed walls that surrounded her. Peter didn’t know that she’d moved out? That meant that he hadn’t even walked into the Swampscott house in months.
“You what?”
“Peter, I moved out two and a half months ago.” When she’d decided to follow the map to Northern Michigan, she’d completely moved out of the Swampscott house, putting some things in storage and giving away almost everything else. She hadn’t completely accepted her divorce at the time, but she’d known that she wouldn’t be returning to that house. She hadn’t even wanted to. She’d had enough cool east coast wind, steely gray views of the Atlantic to last her a lifetime. She wanted color in her life. She wanted warmth.
“Oh. Wow. You didn’t tell me.”
“Was I supposed to?” She was genuinely confused.
“No, I mean, I’m just surprised that you didn’t need my help to coordinate it.”
Caroline’s expression fell completely flat. He treated her like she had less than half a working brain and she didn’t like it. “It’s not that complicated.”
“Where’ve you been for the last two and a half months?”
The truth raced to the tip of her tongue. She was not a liar, never had been one, and she’d never been able to keep anything from Peter. But she swallowed hard. The words receded. She did not want to tell Peter about all of her new friends. About their adventures. About the type of person she could feel herself becoming. She did not want to hear Peter’s opinion on it. And she didn’t particularly want him keeping tabs on her. It stung that he hadn’t even cared to check in on her in two and a half months. And it stung even worse that he’d just assumed she’d stayed holed up in that depressing glass mansion, waiting for him and his girlfriend to kick her out. Yeah. This was firmly in the None of Peter’s Business file.
“Does it matter?”
He was quiet for a minute. She heard him clicking on a keyboard and then a quick exhalation of breath. “You changed your bank passwords.”
He’d just checked her bank accounts in an attempt to find out where she was spending money?! What an absolute jerk! He had no right! She wished she was tart and smart like Thea. She wished she could come up with a great, zinging insult.
Instead, she went full Caroline. “That’s true.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” His tone was that of an exasperated caretaker.
“No!” Depends on if you think being chased by a soul-sucking demon is trouble. “Peter, I’m fine. I’m living my life. I’m not going to bother you. I’m fine.”
“You’re with a man, aren’t you?”
Though she knew what he was asking, technically, she was on this adventure with three men, four now, including Arturo. She felt guilty thinking of misrepresenting Jack and Jean Luc as romantic interests of hers considering they were so firmly spoken for by her friends, but she didn’t think Tre would have too strong of an objection t
o this little white lie. So it was with his face in mind that she firmly answered. “Yes.”
“Jesus. Well. Didn’t think you were going to be living with another man so soon after our divorce. But I suppose that’s fine.”
She said nothing.
“I’ll let you know when things with the house are finalized.”
“Alright.”
“Goodbye, Caroline.”
“Goodbye.”
She hung up the phone and stared at its black screen. As if she’d summoned them up from the depths of a dark ocean, push notifications lit up her phone one by one, like wiggling, glittering fish. She wiped at the tears in her eyes and tossed her phone aside.
***
“How’s he doing?” Jean Luc asked Caroline that night as she came to sit heavily at the dinner table, her bottom lip worrying between her teeth. She’d been with Arturo for the last half an hour, mopping his forehead and murmuring to him, trying to get him to eat some broth.
Tre thought that it showed exactly how good a guy Jean Luc was that he even gave a shit whether or not Arturo lived or died.
Tre stabbed at his food and tried to wipe the annoyed expression off his face.
Caroline sighed. “He’s okay. Still feverish. But he talked a little bit.”
“Talked?” Thea said in surprise. That showed a huge improvement in his health. “What did he say?”
Caroline blushed deeply, dropping her chin so that her hair fell forward. “He called me an angel.”
Tre’s fork screeched against his plate as he stabbed at his chicken. What the absolute fuck? This guy isn’t well enough to barely open his eyes and he’s already hitting on Caroline? Tre immediately added it to his growing list of reasons to hate Arturo.
Martine’s eyebrows shot up as well. “That’s good news.”
“Depends on your point of view,” Tre grumbled.
Jack laughed humorlessly. “Couldn’t agree more, son.” He wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin on the table. “Anyone else feel like we’ve gone through to another dimension or something? One where we’ve got our Sweet Sweet playing nursemaid to the devil?” He nodded at Caroline.