“Jesus, Hadley.” Kason crossed the kitchen to gently lift my arm at the elbow. “You didn’t tell me you were bleeding.”
His mass blocked the poppies, but they had burned their bright, happy color into my mind forever. The kitchen turned watery, and I shook my head until hot tears tracked down my face because it wasn’t fair. If Kason didn’t know how to stop the fae and end winter, then what the hell were those flowers doing here other than to give false hope? What the hell was I doing here?
“Hadley.” It came as a warm caress against my lips.
I opened my eyes to see Kason, just inches away, our breaths mingling. He thumbed my tears, his mouth locked in a frown and a worried crease between his eyebrows. His touch rolled a pleasant shudder down to my toes, made me melt into his hands. Something flickered across his dark gaze, something that ignited an ache between my legs before he pulled away.
“Come here,” he growled and nodded to the sink. “I’ll stop the bleeding.”
I released an unsteady breath. This guy was giving me hot and cold whiplash, but I would be kidding myself if I said I didn’t kind of like it. “You touch my hands, I’ll cut you.”
He slapped a small towel from the refrigerator over his shoulder and made a sound at the back of his throat as if indifferent to my request. “Good to know. I’ll sleep better knowing that.”
“I’m serious,” I said, planting myself where I stood.
His gaze wandered down my body on a slow, deliberate journey, dragging over my sweater that fit when I was fifteen to the lone boot on my foot. “How’d you get the cut?”
I blinked down at the gash near my wrist. “I cut it on some barbed wire outside my broth—” I snapped my mouth shut again and bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. “Barbed wire.”
He guided me forward to the sink with a light touch to the elbow and ran cold water over my wrist. Blood streaked down the inside of my silver atern into a swirl down the drain.
“Any idea why those things outside were chasing you?” he asked, turning the water off.
“They think I hacked into the fae computer system.”
“And did you?”
I shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
He took the towel from over his shoulder and wrapped and knotted it tightly around my wrist, gently and without nudging my hands. “Why do you do it?”
“I have to do something for food. Not all of us can live like this.”
He snorted. “I wouldn’t call this living.”
“Maybe for you,” I said, glancing at the poppies behind us. “I don’t need to leave my house. Haven’t for two years.”
His gaze snapped up to meet mine, that same curiosity burning bright. “Why?”
I opened my mouth to explain it, but realized I didn’t know how to put it into words. Even if I did, he didn’t need to hear about any of that.
“Well, if you won’t tell me why two years, can you tell me why today?” he asked.
“Ty Brunoch sent me a message.”
“A…boyfriend?”
I screwed up my face at him. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
A strange expression rolled over his stone features, one I couldn’t read. “So this Ty… Did he send you here?”
“He showed me a picture of you, said you were in Reykjavik and that you could end fae power.”
“And who told him that?”
“He didn’t say.” We still stood next to each other by the sink, and I didn’t plan on moving anytime soon. It wasn’t just the house that smelled like cedar and chocolate—it was him. I scooted closer, inhaling him like a drug. “But he was right.”
His gaze searched mine, twin dark flames penetrating deep. “About?”
“A human living in Faction 11,” I said, more than a little breathless.
A muscle ticked in his jaw as his gaze dipped to my lips. He turned, taking his delightful smell with him, and strode slowly toward the living room. “I hate to break it to you—”
“You know.” I followed and powered my belief in him into my steady gaze. “You may not think you do, but you know.”
“I’m going back to bed.” With a sigh, he shook his head down at my dropped coat on the floor by the front door and bent to pick it up. Then he pointed at a narrow door in the wall with an exaggerated finger. “Closet.”
“That’s nice.” I circled to the red couch and Nasty.
“…nightmare.” He shuffled around in that closet of his for a bit while muttering to himself, then stepped toward the stairs. “You can have your pick of bedrooms. But stay out of mine.”
“Should I stay out of your dreams and fantasies, too?” I asked, blinking up at him.
He stopped his trek up the stairs and squeezed the wooden railing until his knuckles turned white. I shot a grin at his back, enjoying the tension rolling off him in waves. It would be so easy to rile him up until he lost all those hardened restraints and eased the ache between my legs that throbbed whenever he slid me that smoldering, dark gaze of his.
Like he was now, only instead of desire, it burned with dislike. “I can’t help you, Hadley. You’re leaving first thing tomorrow.”
4
“I am never leaving this house,” I whispered, in total and complete awe.
The room I’d just entered in Kason’s basement glinted orange shimmers from the overhead light onto rows and rows of glass bottles. Wine bottles. Not the kind that came in cardboard boxes or the cheaper than water shit like Necromancer’s Piss, but real wine with dates on the fancy labels and words like vintage, vineyard, and names of places I’d never heard of. I would die in this room, I would make sure of it, and I would accept the killing blow with a smile on my face.
But first, a sample taste test. Then food.
Kason had gone to bed hours ago. Even though my limbs felt like I’d strapped an entire fireplace to each of them, my hands hurt like they were being scrubbed to the bone by electrical sandpaper. No way could I sleep with that kind of nonsense. Besides that, my mind wouldn’t shut off. I’d tried emailing Ty for more information, but he must have been asleep because he didn’t answer. But I refused to give up hope that Kason was the key who could end fae power over witches. I would make him help me even if he didn’t know how. After all, I was a witch. He was a human. Carry the one, add the zero, and I would win every time.
I forearmed a bottle with a smartly dressed green man on the label, and almost immediately another one clinked into the empty spot on the shelf. Smiling as if I’d just hit the jackpot, I forearmed that one too. Another one filled its spot. I chuckled, amazed at my good luck. This was what magic should be used for—a continuous supply of wine. And, yes, also to keep the last human who could end fae power’s food reserves from running out.
I booked it up the stairs to the kitchen and a bottle opener of some kind. No twisty tops or plastic spigots here, ladies and gentleman. This was the fancy shit.
Except when I finally found an opener, I couldn’t prod the bottle open with elbows or various other parts of my body. I needed working hands that didn’t hurt so much. Frustrated, I dropped the bottle in the sink and nudged and heaved the microwave until it crashed into the sink too. When that didn’t work to smash the bottle open, I chewed my lip and stared at the atern on my wrist.
Wine numbed the constant agony, sharpened the barbed wire across my memories, made me somewhat whole again. I needed this to focus on Kason and figure him out.
Onen, I thought at it.
My atern ticked down one as the cork popped free, and wine glug-glugged down the drain. I lunged for it and licked the droplets off the rim with a relieved sigh. Then, armed with a bottle of wine mixed with fennel seeds and plugged with a straw, and a bowl of cereal sans milk, I finally sat on the couch. Foreign sounds filled my new home while I ate and drank, and then I faded farther into the couch until I eventually passed out.
A banging noise jolted me awake. My straw stuck to my lips, and I swatted it away and sat up. It
took a few seconds for me to remember where I was—somewhere much brighter than what I was used to, softer, warmer. Right, Kason’s house. The realization brought a smile to my face and a pleasant flurry through my chest.
It had been so long since I’d held to a spark of hope, and it painted the world in springtime colors. Hinted at what was to come. Even my heart, which had grown black and spiked with metal barbs, glowed brightly.
I stood and followed the sound of the steady bangs into the kitchen and through a back door into a garage. A large black vehicle took up most of the far wall. Not many folks on the outskirts of Reykjavik had cars. School buses and snow plows, sure, but not individual cars. A jeep, I thought was the name of it. I could count on one hand the number of witches I knew with a vehicle. It seemed a bit ironic that there was a jeep in the garage when Kason couldn’t even leave the house.
At the front of the garage on either side of a workbench, neat stacks of wooden beams and other various sized pieces leaned against the wall, some with intricate carvings and some without. A heavy-looking slab of wood jutted up from the center of the concrete floor surrounded by a variety of tools. And standing behind it, with a nail plugged between his lips and a hammer in his hand, was a shirtless Kason.
My breaths became shallow as my heartbeat rushed heat up my neck. Muscles rippled down his arm as he adjusted the hammer in his grip. His chest and abs flexed when he took the nail from his mouth and centered it over a post that stuck out from one end. Deep concentration creased his forehead while he pounded the nail in.
“Any idea why the microwave is in the sink?” he asked without looking up.
“No idea.” I floated forward to see more of what he was working on.
The edges of the largest slab of wood waved around the perimeter in perfect twin curves, and etched in the center was a large yellowish sun with rays extending outward. I reached out to touch it, to feel the grooves, sense the heat I desperately wanted it to give off.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A table. Or it will be when I finish.”
I looked up to see his narrowed gaze aimed at my hand hovering near the wood. I dropped it back to my side. “You did this?”
“You hack computers and make a mess of other people’s houses.” He leaned down to rub his long fingers, almost lovingly, against the edge as if smoothing what was already perfect, then stood to face me. “I build things.”
“Not bad.” Better than not bad. “Did you build everything in the house?”
“Not quite. I redid the kitchen cupboards and one of the bed frames upstairs.”
Silence fell between us for several long moments as his gaze dipped to my mouth. I ran my tongue over my lips in case I had some stray cereal stuck to my face. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Finally, he cleared his throat and bent to gather his tools on the ground. “You slept late.”
“Yeah, the Diamond Dogs ran it out of me quick. Couch potato to an oh-shit-I’m-going-to-die sprint across the outskirts of Reykjavik should come with some kind of training.”
It might have been my imagination, but a smile leaped across Kason’s face before it vanished again.
“I’ll be feeling these aches for days.” I stretched up on my tiptoes, hands over my head, letting my muscles extend before shrinking back into their vegetative state.
Kason turned at the moment my already too small sweater rode up my stomach to my rib cage, baring some serious skin. Several tools slipped from his grip and clattered to the concrete.
“Damn it,” he hissed. “Why don’t you go back inside or go jump off a cliff or something?”
“Is that any way to treat a g—” I stopped, stared.
Kason had shifted with his back toward me, and an intricate tattoo threaded from his waist up to where his shoulders met his neck. In the center, it looked like a complicatedly knotted rope twisting across his back. Runes surrounded it, but not in a language I’d ever learned.
“Kason,” I said and stepped behind him. “What is this? Who put it there?”
He bent slowly and with gritted teeth to gather his dropped tools. “What do you mean who put it there? I put it there.”
“What does it mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a design.”
Bullshit. I knew a pagan symbol when I saw one.
He stood with a grimace and placed his tools on a workbench against the front wall. Glancing at me, he headed back inside. “Come on. You can eat before you leave.”
I followed, only to continue to study his tattoo.
He hefted the microwave out of the sink with a groan, his muscles adding more dips and curves to the design on his back. “Please tell me why I just lifted the microwave out of the sink.”
I shrugged. “I couldn’t get the wine open.”
His eyes fell shut, and he pointed at a silver sphere on the counter beside the refrigerator. “Wine opener. Just set it on the base there and hit the blue button.”
“Really?” I moved in next to it and leaned in close. “Fucking brilliant.”
“Yeah, brilliant.” He sighed. “What kind of breakfast do you want? Make it quick so you can get out of here.”
I narrowed my gaze at him. Apparently, my wiles weren’t wiley enough. Either there was something wrong with him, or there was something wrong with me. Maybe he didn’t like brunettes. Maybe he preferred women with more than one boot. I hated to use magic on him because he seemed decent enough—a tad abrasive towards home intruders and a neat freak, but decent—but I would most definitely use it if I had to so I could stay here and figure him out. A lust spell? That could be fun.
“Cereal. No milk,” I told him.
After opening and closing a couple cabinet doors, he slapped down two bowls and a box of cereal. “Anything else?”
“Do you have any rose water?”
He pinned me with an exasperated look. “What guy has rose water?”
No lust spell, then. I wrestled the box of cereal open by denting it with my elbow, and while most of the flakes scattered across the table, a few made it into the bowl with my creative pouring skills.
Kason watched my movements carefully while he scrubbed a hand over his whiskered jaw. “I could have helped you with that.”
“I know, I know. I made a mess,” I said as I scooped up my bowl between my elbow and side.
“Well, yes, but…you could have just asked for help.”
“That’s nice.” I turned and walked my bowl to the front door, my insides squirming at his level of concern. At least he hadn’t asked what was wrong with my hands, which kind of surprised me in a way. It was as if he knew not to.
Outside the half-oval window on the front door, it had stopped snowing, but a bitter-looking wind bent the dead trees sideways and whistled through the cracks in the house. Diamond Dog tracks marked the snow, but that was the only sign of them. They now knew that the secret to getting me out of my house after two years lived here, and would likely come sniffing around again to investigate. I’d led them straight here, which come to think of it, had been too easy to find. Anyone with locator spell know-how could’ve found Kason. I guessed the reason Ty couldn’t do this himself was because he wanted to save the revenge-against-faes thing for me. I knew I liked Ty for a reason.
The Diamond Dogs would likely wait until their magic was at full force again before they came back, and I would be ready for them, just as soon as I found the secret behind Kason. Somehow.
Footsteps sounded behind me, along with loud crunching, and Kason’s body moved in next to mine. He hooked two fingers through the loop at my waistband and pulled. His knuckles rubbed against the flesh on my side. His thumb skimmed there, too, not to pull, it seemed, but to feel. The shock of his nearness and his cold hands made me shiver and sweat at the same time. He spun me around toward the kitchen, then let go. It all happened so fast, but the thrill of his touch pulsed over my skin for several breathless seconds.
He sat at the table and
dunked the spoon into his bowl. “We eat at the table, not standing up.”
Well, okay then. For once, I didn’t argue since I was too busy refilling my lungs. With my bowl balanced on my forearm, I sat across from him but kept my bowl where it was. Whenever I needed a bite, I shot out my tongue like the lizards I’d read about in school. Normally, I ate cereal vertically on the couch while browsing Nasty, so sitting across from someone in the kitchen, especially someone who ate each bite so precisely, whose Adam’s apple moved so gracefully, felt strange. But I would go with it. I was pretty much an expert at trying out new things lately.
Every once in a while, Kason would glance at me over his coffee cup, and I almost felt self-conscious under his questioning gaze, as if I was somehow doing all of this wrong but had no idea how to do it right.
I cleared my throat to break this unnatural silence that allowed me too much pointless self-analysis. “What’s the last thing you remember before being locked up inside a house?”
He set his cup down carefully. “Being locked up in the house before that one.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” he growled. “For over two years, I’ve been trapped inside three different houses.”
“And you don’t remember anything between those houses?”
He pushed his empty bowl away and stared at a point over my shoulder. “Night and cold. Blurry, like I’d been drugged.”
The picture Ty showed me of him had been taken in front of a fireplace, but not the one in this house. Maybe his first or second. “What else? Any faces or sounds or something?”
He sat back on the stool, his hands wrapped around the coffee cup, and frowned into it. “Laughter, but the innocent kind. Maybe a kid. And pain in my back, raw and burning.”
Was that why he moved so stiffly? Because his back still burned? “That’s a strange combination.”
“You’re telling me.” He rose, his jaw tight, and carried his dishes to the sink.
I turned in my seat to watch his long legs eat up the distance across the kitchen. “Before the three houses, what do you remember?”
“Normal stuff. A house, two parents, an older sister I couldn’t stand, and winter.” He shrugged. “Always winter.”
Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection Page 4