Roane pushed Ruthie aside and took my hand. Wrapped his long fingers around mine for a better grip. Twisted our hands together. And held on.
The spell worked. The pain began to leech out of me, and I could draw in a slightly deeper breath.
I felt Roane squeeze my hand. His face, so near mine, was simple perfection. Ruggedly handsome. Five o’clock scruff. Sparkling olive irises. Lashes to die for. Or kill for.
But then, as I watched him, his shoulders went stiff.
“Stop!” I heard Ruthie in the distance, the ringing in my ears ebbing at last. “Defiance, stop!”
His face tightened into a mask of barely controlled agony, and he panted like he somehow felt my pain. He kept his gaze locked on mine, those perfect olive irises shimmering with unspent tears. He bit down on his lip and closed his eyes, pushing a tear past his lashes.
Ruthie and Annette were both yelling at me. Annette shook me. “Defiance, stop!”
I snapped to attention. Pulling my hand out of Roane’s grip, I tried to sit up. But the pain, while manageable, was still there.
Roane fell to the ground.
I gaped at him. “What happened?” I asked Ruthie. “What did I do?”
“Now’s not the time. You need to ease his pain. Hurry, love.”
He gripped a table leg with one hand and clutched his chest with the other. What did I do?
“Hurry, sweetheart.”
I rolled over and drew the symbol that practically burst out of me, perhaps putting a little more energy into than I’d planned and pushed it over him like a blanket.
Light enveloped him. Embraced him. Saturated every molecule in his body. It took a moment, but his muscles relaxed. His panting slowed.
I eased off the table despite the pain and lay behind him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into his ear. Scooting next to him, I brushed his hair off his face. “Roane, please be okay.”
He turned over and buried his face in my hair. “I’m okay, gorgeous,” he said, but he said it through clenched teeth. Slowly, the spell worked, and he relaxed more and more.
I lay my head on my folded arm and petted his hair. Kissed his cheek. Marveled in the fresh scent of him. And fell.
Twelve
Sometimes I wonder if all of this is happening
because I didn’t forward that message to ten other people.
-Meme
I heard a clock ticking down the hall. Felt a weight on my waist. Warm covers over that. I pried open my lids to see a beautiful red wolf in human form.
His lashes fanned across his cheeks as he slept, his breathing deep and even. An arm tucked under his head.
I started to move, but the vines that embraced us tightened gently.
“You’re awake,” Annette whispered from a nearby chair. She’d been working on her laptop. She closed it and eased closer.
My dads sat beside her, draped over the table with blankets wrapped around them, snoring away.
“Am I awake?” I asked, my mouth full of cotton. “This isn’t another dream? Because damn.” I gestured toward the man candy wrapped around me.
She giggled behind her hand.
I heard a soft purr and leaned up to see Ink on the other side of Roane, the cat’s head tucked against the wolf’s neck. “Why is Percy suddenly into bondage?”
“To support your weight,” she whispered. “You were both still healing.”
“Like a cast?” I whispered back.
“Exactly.”
I reached over Roane, and Percy pulled back the vines so I could scratch Ink’s ears. Poor cat had been tortured the last couple of days. I could only hope he’d get used to it. There was no telling how long we would have the little blond with us. If I had my way, it would be forever, but I wasn’t sure how Ink would take that.
“Now that you’re okay”—Nette leaned forward—“you are okay, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Then oh, my God, that was so cool what happened on the stairs. You just flew, vroom.” She reenacted my flight over the railing with her hand. “And then whoosh.” She showed my descent in detail. Apparently, my legs had been kicking and my arms flailing. “And then bam.” She wrapped it up by showing my sudden stop by stopping suddenly. Then her hands floated down like feathers landing softly on the ground.
“A riveting portrayal.”
She hopped off her chair. “Can I get you some water? Coffee? Wine?”
“Please. In that order.”
She snickered and got a glass down.
“Are you sore?” She handed me a glass of water with a straw.
I drew deep from the cup, my throat scorched. “Not terribly.” I couldn’t imagine how Roane would feel. So far, I’d dented his truck, gotten him stabbed, and shattered every bone in his chest. I was such a great dating prospect. It was no wonder he liked me.
“Percy,” I kept my voice low.
A rose blossomed near me.
“Can you let me out without disturbing the wolf?”
He went to work instantly, loosening his grip here and tightening it there, until Roane was secured, and I was free.
“Thank you,” I said to him. “Again.”
Roses all around the kitchen blossomed, filling the room with a rich, fragrant scent.
With Annette’s help, I eased onto my feet, trying not to disturb Roane, but parts of me creaked. Literally creaked. I wondered if there was a spell for that.
Annette draped a blanket over my shoulders.
“Thanks, Nette,” I said softly. Once I’d straightened, I turned and looked behind me.
Ruthie was sleeping in a wingback they’d pulled in for her from the parlor, her sandaled feet propped on an ottoman.
I examined the takeout bags on the table as quietly as I could. “Ruthie is basically a ghost, right?”
“Yeah.” Nette pointed to a bag that had takeout from one of our favorites, Kiki’s.
“Oooo.” I grabbed the chicken fried rice. “And she can’t leave the grounds, right?”
“Right.” She motioned for me to hand her the rice to heat up.
“It’s okay. It’s just as good cold. If she’s a ghost . . .” I paused to take a bite and roll my eyes in ecstasy. “Why does she need sleep?”
She nibbled on a crunchy roll she’d dipped in sweet-and-sour, her plastic chopsticks held expertly. “This is your world, my lurve. I only take messages and do research.”
And I wasn’t sure how much more of this world I could take. “What time is it?”
She took another bite, held up a finger, and reopened her computer to check. “It’s almost three.”
“Holy crap. We’ve been on that floor all day?” Hopefully, no one had come to visit.
“Yep. Your dads, of course, freaked, but Ruthie assured them you’d be fine. Just so you know, they weren’t just a little freaked. Like it really got to them this time.”
I looked over at their sleeping forms. They sat right next to each other, Papi’s arm thrown over Dad. They were going to be so sore when they woke up. “I think they’re traumatized. After my six-month stay-cay, who can blame them?”
“I wish they’d adopt me,” she said softly.
“They still can. You’re only”—I blinked in surprise—“forty-five.”
“So are you,” she said defensively.
“No, I mean, I missed your birthday too.”
“Oh, pfft.” She waved a dismissive hand. “It was uneventful. You didn’t miss anything.”
“We always toast on your birthday.”
“I still toasted. Just, you know, by myself.”
I put down my fork. “You didn’t celebrate?”
“I did, actually.”
“Good.”
I started to take another bite.
“With Percy.”
“You celebrated your birthday with Percy?”
“Yes.”
I pointed up. “This Percy? Our Percy?”
“Yes. And you, actually.” Her mouth slid into a si
deways grin. “He let me into your room so I could toast with you.”
After beaming at her, I looked up. “Thanks, Percy.”
The vines rustled.
“Only I got a little wasted and the next thing I know, I’m back in my room with no recollection of how I got there.”
“Really?”
“Still, it’s not every day one gets to toast one’s birthday with a floating witch in a state of suspended animation.”
“True. So, I need to wash my hair.”
“Wait, what?” she asked,
“I need a shower. Then I’m going to try to get everyone into a real bed.”
“There is no way I’m going upstairs. Not with that thing up there.”
“Okay. But I need a shower.”
She jumped to her feet and grabbed my arm. “There is no way you’re going upstairs either.”
“Nette.” I gave her my no-arguments face.
“Deph.” She gave me hers right back.
“En.”
“Dee.”
“You did not see what my hair went through in the backyard of Clara Thomas’s house.”
“You did not see what you went through on the balcony at Ruthie Goode’s house.”
“Well, I kinda did. You showed me.” And I’d lived it.
“No. You don’t understand. You didn’t just fall. You were shoved with such violence, Dephne. Such malicious intent.” She leaned close and looked at me from over her glasses. “He aimed to kill you.”
“Well, then his aim is lousy.”
“Not from where I was standing.”
I took another bite and washed it down with cool water. “You’re telling me I can’t take a shower because the Puritan from hell is on the balcony?”
“I don’t know where he is. I just know he’s not in here, and here is where I’m staying.” She popped an entire slice of the crunchy roll in her mouth and, well, crunched.
Draping the blanket onto the back of a chair, I rubbed my hands together. “I guess it’s time for a rematch then, because I am taking a shower if it kills me.”
Annette did the deer-in-the-headlights thing.
“Excellent hearing,” a voice came from below. Not, like, hell, but below us. And here we thought our whispering would be nigh indecipherable.
Roane rose, the vines falling away to let him. Ink scrambled away from him while I scrambled to the floor to help.
“I’m good, gorgeous.” He managed a sitting position. He pulled a knee up and put an elbow on it, and all I wanted to do was look under the kilt. I had to know. “But you are in no shape to take on the revenant.”
So that’s what we were calling it now. So much cooler than the Puritan. “And you are in no shape to stop me. You don’t know how bad I want a shower.”
The grin that slid across his face took my breath away. “I didn’t say you couldn’t have a shower. You can use mine.”
While the thought alone sent a warmth to my nethers, I shook my head. “It’ll be fine. I challenged him. He fought back. I’ll use the passageway to sneak up to my room and then deal with him when I smell better.”
Roane surprised me and leaned close. Ran his mouth along my jaw. “You smell like midnight rain and jasmine,” he whispered into my ear, his warm breath giving me goosebumps.
A single chopstick fell to the floor. We looked up at Annette, who sat watching us, transfixed, her chin cupped in her hands.
After a quick giggle, I looked back at the wolf. “I’m so sorry, Roane.”
His thick lashes cast a shadow over the olive green in his eyes. “You said that already, but it was my decision.”
“Your decision?” I was confused. “I didn’t know what that spell would do.” Not till after it was too late, and I’d literally transferred my pain to him.
“Why do you think we didn’t tell you?”
Frustration coursed through my veins like sand. I stood and looked down at him. “You don’t get to make those kinds of decisions without me anymore.”
He stood to tower over me. Not fair. “Then you don’t get to go out in the middle of the night without me anymore.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
We only realized we’d raised our voices when my dads stirred. Papi snuggled closer, and they went back to sleep. Ruthie never moved a muscle, snoring softly. Ladylike.
Roane accompanied Nette and I through the passageways upstairs. He showed us where the passageway opened into Annette’s room, pressing and pushing aside a sliding door to reveal the back of a freestanding mirror.
“It’s in my closet?” she asked.
“So that’s how you unlock them.”
Roane carefully moved the mirror aside, and we stepped in.
“This is your closet?” I marveled because it was marvelous. The thing was massive. While my closet was big, my room was ginormous. Her closet took up half of what would’ve been allotted to her bedroom. Not that she had it even half full.
“Why do you think I chose this room?”
“You need more clothes,” I said.
“I agree. We have to get our business going asap. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.”
We giggled, and she asked Roane, “Are you sure we’re safe?”
“No.” He looked at me. “But a revenant can’t normally do what the Puritan did to you. I don’t think he could hurt a mundane.”
“Oy, with the mundane again.” She held up a hand in surrender. “I’m a witch. I swear.”
He grinned. She melted. It was like his smiles had supernatural powers all their own.
We stepped into her bedroom. She had decorated it with all things witch. It was alarmingly similar to the décor at Love’s shop, The Witchery.
Speaking of whom . . . “You never told me what you did to Love to make her so mad at you.”
“What’s Love got to do with it?”
“I don’t know. You just never—”
“Love hurts.”
“She hurt you?” I asked, alarmed.
“Well, love is a battlefield.”
Ah. We were playing the song title game. “Have you tried love in an elevator?”
“No.” She draped her jacket over her gorgeous cast iron bed. “I’m all out of love.”
“Please.” I examined an old photograph of Percy, my grandfather, in her room. Man, he was a looker. “You’re addicted to love.” I fought both a giggle and the urge to ask her why she had a photo of my grandfather on her mirror. Probably because the guy was hot, but still. He had long since passed. And not peacefully.
“Tainted love, maybe.”
I gaped at her. “You’ve always been lucky in love.”
“No, I’ve always been a victim of love.”
“You can’t give up. People need love.”
“I’m telling you, love stinks.”
“Love makes the world go ’round.”
“Love bites.”
“Give love a try.”
“Love don’t live here anymore.”
“You need to open your heart. You never know. One day you’re walking along, trying not to trip over your own feet, and bam. Love walks in.” I stepped closer. “Like the first time ever I saw your face.” I reached up to brush my fingers across her cheek.
She slapped my hand away. “Space bubble.”
“I never knew love like this before.”
She ducked away from me and held up a finger to put me on pause. “Okay, the love game is over.”
“Last night, I dreamed of loving you.”
“No. That’s wrong.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “Lovin. Touchin. Squeezin.”
“Ew, stop.”
After drawing in a deep breath full of melancholy and my lost will to live, I headed to the closet and ducked into the passageway. “Love will lead you back to me!” I yelled.
“Not in this lifetime!” she yelled back before closing her bathroom door.
Roane slid the door closed and followed me. “You two
have some unique conversations.”
“Thank you,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure it was a compliment. I only found my room in the passageway because of the camera set up. I pointed at it. “By the way, this needs to come down.”
He grinned.
“I mean it, Roane. I know magic. I can do things.”
When I opened the door-slash-shelf, I saw a little blond boy in the corner of my bathroom. I turned on the light. He sat huddled on the tile floor, his arms wrapped around his knees, his face buried behind them.
“Samuel.” I rushed to him.
He looked up, his face wet with tears. And there was a mark. On his face. Like he’d been hit.
Before I could even wonder about the whys and hows of a ghost bruising—honestly, how hard did a ghost have to be hit before it left a bruise—anger spiked within me like a lightning strike.
It was so hot and so fast, I didn’t remember leaving my room or walking the mezzanine to the balcony that overlooked the foyer or Roane yelling at me from behind.
I didn’t remember raising my hand. Or casting the spell in the air to summon the revenant. And I didn’t remember dragging him into my palm. Curling him into my fist. Crushing him.
Until I stood there, my chest heaving, my knuckles white with a blackness seeping from between my fingers. That was when I panicked. “Gigi!” I yelled, afraid to move, like that time I’d captured a bee, and the fear of the sting I might receive if the thing got the chance had immobilized me.
Roane stood beside me, staring at my outstretched hand. Then he folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the back wall as though he hadn’t a care in the world. As though to say, “You got yourself into this mess. You can get yourself out of it.”
“Gigi!” I yelled again.
Annette came running, a towel wrapped around her, and skidded to a halt.
Spry for an eighty-year-old, Ruthie hurried up the stairs, my dads behind her, making sure she didn’t fall. They needn’t have bothered. She was quicker and more agile than me.
“What do I do with it?” I asked, imitating a marble statue. Some of the darkness leeched out. I slapped my other hand over my fist to hold it in.
Ruthie gawked. “Is that—?”
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