by Scott Tracey
“It’s fine. Yesterday was … a lot. We got back pretty late.”
“And then Trey stayed the night?” Jade raised an eyebrow, but the look seemed fake somehow. Like she was just going through the motions.
I looked at her a little closer. The bags weren’t as bad as they’d looked last night, but there was still something in her eyes. Worry. “Are you … are you okay?” I asked.
Jade smiled and deflected the concern with ease. A roll of her shoulders, a short laugh, and she looked more like the Jade I’d known than ever before. “I’m untouchable,” she said lightly, with a teasing tone. “So Trey stayed the night?”
I shook my head, trying not to blush. “Can you get ahold of Drew for me? I don’t know if he’ll pick up if I call.” He’d been quick to go off and lick his wounds last night, and god only knew how long it was going to take before he calmed down.
The clatter of Jade’s coffee cup yanked me out of my own head. Looking at me with terror, she quickly picked up the cup she must have knocked over. “I’m … we don’t talk. Why would I talk to him?”
I explained about Bennett, and everything that had happened last night. About how Drew had met his father for the first time, and it appeared that his dad had been a total sociopath.
“Wow,” Jade said, some of the color returning to her face. She was still a little pale, though. “But why me?”
I shrugged. “Because he doesn’t want to talk to me? And Riley can’t talk to him. Maybe you could say something that would help. I don’t know. I just don’t like the idea of him wandering around the town like everything’s fine while he’s got this on his plate.”
Jade twitched, a movement that turned into a nod. What was going on with her? She wasn’t normally this scattered, or this freaked out. “Yeah,” she said quickly. “I can do that. I should get going anyway. Sorry to crash your breakfast.”
“Jade,” I called, before she left the kitchen completely. “It’s no big deal. If you want to stay for a couple of days, I’m sure Jason won’t care too much.”
“Catherine will, though,” she said sadly. “And that’s a headache no one wants.”
I let her get changed in my room and then walked her to the door before she left. She hugged me, an impulsive, tight movement that nearly choked the air from my lungs. Whatever Jade was going through, she’d share when she was ready. I was sure of it.
But I started to put it together almost as soon as she left. I walked into my bathroom, and it was just sitting there on the floor, right next to the trash container. I bent down, picking up the blue-and-white piece, not recognizing it immediately. The cardboard was a piece of a box that boasted “Know five days sooner than the leading brand.” A pregnancy test.
Jade.
eighteen
“I told you I’d let you make your own decision,” Jason said a couple of hours later when he walked into my room. I’d turned the cardboard piece over and over in my hands like I was a magician, and I was suddenly going to turn it into not my problem. “But you have no idea how hard it is not to knock you out and drive until we’re on the wrong side of dawn. John did it once, it couldn’t be that hard.”
“He never escaped, though,” I said. I slid the cardboard into the palm of my hand, and very carefully slid it under the pillow. The fact that Jade might be pregnant left me with a whole host of worries, and I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly was the problem. Intuition was a fickle bitch sometimes. I knew it was a bad news, but I couldn’t figure out why.
Jason stopped less than five feet from the door, and he looked around him awkwardly. I nearly smiled when I recognized the discomfort in his expression. He squared his shoulders when he was uncertain, and one corner of his mouth quirked up even as his lips pressed together.
“Lucien was always watching,” I explained. “So were you,” I added, waving a hand. “But it was always more than that. I’ve tried to figure out why John took the bargain with Lucien, why he agreed to undergo the geas and let Lucien into his head like that. Why Lucien would want that. Maybe keeping me in the dark was a victory, but he never won a victory when he could win two.” I scratched my leg, suddenly aware of Jason’s eyes on mine. The heavy look that increased the pressure in the room a thousandfold. I don’t think I’ve ever had his undivided attention before. “Lucien wanted a window into John’s head. And the geas was the perfect way. No matter how far he’d gone, Lucien could find him.”
“That is … very astute,” Jason said, and it was so grudging and uncomfortable that it made him sound so much like his brother. A sound I thought I’d never hear again.
Neither one of us knew what to say, it was obvious. I knew we were building up to something, but I wasn’t sure what. So I took a moment and looked at him. Really looked at my father. The first time we’d met, all I’d seen was the arrogant warlock businessman. Then later in the hospital, things had been awkward and uncertain, and boundaries were just starting to change. Until I came back to this house, and the walls slammed up again. It was easier for Jason to hold me at arm’s length. It was easier not to feel anything, and so he tried.
But somewhere along the way, he’d changed again. Or maybe I’d changed, and he’d been forced to follow suit. And now, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the doors closed fast enough. And I was starved for every scrap of knowledge I could pry out of him.
“You are the most headstrong little shit I’ve ever met,” Jason sighed, lowering himself down into my desk chair. “Nothing like me at all. I was too busy trying to be perfect. You’re more like him than you know. Jonathan, I mean. He was impulsive, and reactionary.” It sounded like a compliment, but it was coming from Jason, so understandably it took me a few minutes to process.
It took him a long time to look me in the eyes again. “Tell me what you’re planning. I can help you, Braden. You don’t have to do this by yourself.”
There was a chess set on a tiny table in the corner of my room near the window. I didn’t know if it had always been in the room or if someone had just assumed I’d play and put it in there for me. Either way, I hadn’t had much use for it before. But now I dragged it over by the window seat and started setting up the pieces. The set was old, carved out of wood, and polished by countless generations of Thorpe boys no doubt. What better introduction to the feud that would be their livelihood than the civilized game of kings?
“Do you remember right after we first met? When we had lunch at the place across from the high school?” I asked, as I began to methodically set up the pieces on the board. John had taught me to play years ago, but my skills had always been rusty.
It helped me to think, and it reminded me of Riley. She’d talked about a Bishop in Black’s house … Matthias. What if it really was as simple as a chess game? Make a move, anticipate their reactions. It sounded easy in theory, but probably not in practice.
“Yes,” he said cautiously, like I was leading him into a trap.
Which I was. Sort of. “You told me how you and Catherine had been friends once. How you went searching for Grace Lansing’s treasure. Did I ever tell you what it was?”
Jason didn’t bother responding. He waited. But I had his complete attention.
“It’s the power that she stole from Lucien. She ripped it out of him, trapped him in this town, and then I think she expected to come back for it later. Only that didn’t happen. But that’s not the important part.” I let a silence build between us, pretending to feel the anticipation that was clearly going to annoy Jason so badly until he—
“Braden! Just get to the point.”
“I know where they are. There’s still two wellsprings left.” And now with some distance from the situation, I knew what the butterflies in my chest had always been. Someone had accessed my power, and they were trying to use it to open the wellsprings and claim the power. That they had to keep trying—that Grace had even summoned me so that she could study me while it was in progress—meant that something was very wrong. She couldn’
t claim the wellsprings’ power on her own.
When Grace tore Lucien’s power out of him, she hid the power in three places deep below the Belle Dam soil. All the power of a Rider, the oldest of demons, buried and forgotten. Until now. I unlocked the first wellspring on accident, and drained it dry by trying to use it on Lucien. Now there were only two left, and each one had the potential to be devastating.
“What would you do with it?” I asked. “If you had more power than Catherine could even dream of? Unparalleled knowledge of the future and the way to shape events to your choosing.” I let Jason ponder the question. I gave him time. And then I quietly asked, “Did you spend even one second trying to think about how to make things better? Using that power for good things? Or would you just punish and break Lucien and the Lansings?”
“I … ”
“That’s why I have to do this by myself,” I said gently. “Maybe I’ll screw it up. Maybe I won’t even make it to the end. But I’m the only one who really knows what he’s getting into. That power’s not passive. It’s a virus, sneaking into the cracks and exploiting all your weaknesses. Making you a hybrid, a demon with a human’s ability to be clever and cruel in the same breath.”
“How do you … ”
“That’s not important,” I said. I didn’t want to think about the winter voice. About what I’d started to become while it was inside of me. What I still might have become if Lucien hadn’t pushed me and Grace saved me by tearing out my power.
“I need you to tell me about my mother,” I continued. “About how she died.”
He gave me a long look, and it seemed like he shrank in on himself, like his clothes were suddenly too big for him. “Fair enough,” he said under his breath. “We didn’t tell anyone that we were expecting. No one. Rose thought it would be bad luck. But Lucien knew. He told me before, my child would be special. But that night, he was beside himself. And just a few weeks before Rose reached the first trimester, she … .she saw.”
“Had anyone who knew me seen me that night, I never would have heard the end of it.” Jason’s eyes were distant, and there was a soft smile playing out on his face. “I’d left work early to be with her. I had her feet in my hands because she was always complaining about how much they hurt.” And then the smile jarred, a movie that had suddenly frozen. It was a moment trapped underneath seventeen years of grief. The warmth drained out of his face and voice. “She gasped, and her eyes flashed like diamonds catching light. She took one look at me and said—”
He left it hanging there, and I almost leapt off the window seat and went for his throat. “What did she say?” I demanded.
He shook his head, looking at me like he’d forgotten we were talking. “She said, ‘You’ll have to tell him that I love him. Do it every day.’ It was so … matter of fact. And then later, I’d ask her about it, and it didn’t seem to register. It never worried her, these things she was saying. These visions. She acted like they were a normal part of her pregnancy.”
I didn’t bother to wipe my face off. “What happened next?”
“These … incidents kept happening. Saying things that made no sense. Anecdotes. Warnings. Wishes. She read books on spirituality, things that talked about the equilibrium between life and death. She even looked through our family books, journals, anything she could get her hands on. She became a voracious reader. She never told me what she was looking for, but I always got the sense she was looking for meaning.”
His head turned down, and this time there was no upturn to his mouth when his lips pressed together. Shame. Self-loathing. “You knew something was wrong, didn’t you?” I said slowly.
“I suspected,” Jason admitted immediately, like he’d been waiting for the question. “Lucien tried to tell me that it was just your powers bleeding through her and that there was nothing to worry about. Worrying would only stress out Rosemarie, and with her, you as well.”
“She talked about me like she wouldn’t be here to watch me grow up,” I said. “You didn’t think about what that would mean?”
“Of course I knew what that meant,” Jason snapped, looking at me with a suddenly stoked fire. It didn’t matter that he was my father, or I was his son, self-loathing fueled the burning inside him. “You think I didn’t second-guess everything Lucien was telling me? That having a child would take my wife from me? That if only I’d had the courage to schedule an ab—,” he looked at me with panic, and dropped his eyes. The rage burned out of him, leaving only quiet and confession. “Every time I turned, Lucien was there trying to dissuade me from what I was worried over. Tried to turn my focus back to Catherine. And then traces of workings started to appear. Magic that wasn’t mine, and wasn’t your mother’s. Little scraps that I could feel but not decipher, enough to dig into my mouth like a toothache.”
“Someone was using magic against you?”
“Even now, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know if Lucien convinced Catherine to make a move against us, or John had experimented with something new, or maybe even someone new had been brought in to raise suspicions. All I know is that there were scraps of magic twisting around my house like motes of dust, and I couldn’t determine where they were coming from. And my wife’s behavior got stranger by the day.”
“But what did you think?” I asked, surprised at how gentle my tone was.
He snorted. “Catherine, of course. I thought she’d found out, somehow. That she worked against your mother and me, hoping that Rose would lose the baby. But then she had you, and you were perfect.” He smiled, looking at me quickly before a quick flush of red struck his cheeks and he looked away. “Your eyes were the same color they are now. I never noticed that before.”
“Then came the depression, and I still didn’t do anything. I was so busy trying to catch Catherine in the act, that I never … ” Jason scrubbed his hands over his face. His mouth was a bitter frown. Each word chosen with ultimate care. “I went into the office one morning. Lucien was there. Waiting on me. He couldn’t have been involved, he was with me the entire time. It was the only time I ever suspected him in twenty years of service.”
Jason saw my look of disbelief. If anyone in Belle Dam had the ability to arrange someone’s death while giving himself an alibi, it was Lucien. “I’ve seen his temper only a handful of times. Never as bad as that day. Lucien always knew what to expect. Except for that day. That day was a shock to both of us.”
“What happened?”
“We got back to the house, and he just,” Jason made a motion with his hand, “relaxed. ‘Your son is fine,’ he said, like that was the only thing that mattered. When I asked about Rose,” Jason licked his lips and looked away. “When I asked about your mother, it was one of the few times I realized that he was just a thing pretending to be human. He turned back to me, like my question was almost an afterthought, and said, ‘I’ll send someone to collect the body.’”
“And yet you continued working with him for the next twenty years,” I pointed out with a fair amount of bitterness.
I half-expected him to explode on me. To rage and yell and unleash some of that terrible anger I knew he had bottled up inside. But he sat there like a sad, ruined thing. “I should tell you that all I cared about was my weapon. My vengeance on Catherine,” he said wearily. “You could hate me properly again. And it’s … easier when you hate me.”
“I’d rather hate you for the things you’ve earned,” I said. It was a surprise he heard me at all, I could barely force the words out as a whisper.
“Bennett said that what really happened to my mother was more interesting than the story,” I said slowly. Something about Jason’s story still seemed off.
“I don’t know what else could possibly make the story worse,” Jason said. The mask faltered again, and I saw the grief that Jason had tied himself up in for the greater part of my life.
I believed him. Whatever Jason knew, he’d told me. If he’d wanted to spin me a story, he would have chosen something that left him in a better li
ght. Something that didn’t expose the raw, seething parts of him that had never quite managed to heal.
A moment hung between us, and I had to decide what to do. Did I tell Jason what I was planning? No, I couldn’t do that much. Every word I said out loud brought me too close to things that Lucien might pick up on. And he might still think of me a bit player in his grand plan, but it was almost definite that Jason was still a major player.
“If I asked you to forget the feud,” I said carefully, playing with the hem of my shirt, “forget Catherine and revenge and everything else that has kept you going … could you do that?”
The problem with asking a question you already know the answer to, is that you already know the answer. “Braden … ” It was a pitying tone, a sad but sincere expression.
“Just don’t do anything rash. I can’t handle anyone else getting caught up in something they can’t handle.”
“I’m the adult here,” Jason said, a measure of his old stiffness evident. “I’m the one who should be protecting you.”
“Trey struck a bargain with Lucien. That’s how he saved me last night.” I don’t know why I had the tendency to blurt things out to Jason without the buildup.
“I figured as much,” Jason said slowly. “Do you know what the terms are?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. It’s on my agenda.” I looked down at my hands. “It’s going to get bad, Jason. I can feel it.”
“It wasn’t going to get any easier. I could try to negotiate with Lucien, but I don’t know how much either one of us has to bring to the bargaining table.” He eyed me from the desk chair. “He let you live for a reason. That’s not negligible. I don’t know how much latitude that would allow you, though.”
I doubted there was anyone in Belle Dam outside of this room who would believe that Jason Thorpe would ever actually offer to try to negotiate on behalf of one of the Lansings. Jason had never looked older, and as usual, it caused a rip of guilt in my chest. It was like I couldn’t walk into a room without tearing down the people inside. I was less dangerous than ever, but I still caused chaos wherever I went.