I didn’t let the showing go on very long, before I pushed him lightly away. “Not just yet. We have to decide what to do.”
“Easy. We let Dalton think we’re on his side.”
“But are we?”
“I don’t know. But we don’t need to know, at least not yet. He’ll tell us how to find Alex. We’ll go get the East Seed.”
“And if Alex won’t give it up?”
“We’ll make him listen to reason.” Cooper smiled. “I’m pretty confident I can take him.”
“And what if he isn’t there?” I asked. “What if it’s another trap, like getting us up here?”
“This wasn’t a trap. Dalton didn’t do anything to us.”
“Except lie. He asked us to come under false pretenses.”
“Maybe,” said Cooper. “Or maybe he just exaggerated. He still claims to be willing to give us the North Seed.”
“Claim being the operative word,” I said. “He might have no intention of parting with it. For all we know, he might not even have it.”
“Even if he’s lying outright, if it was for the purpose of attacking us, he would have done it already. We’re fine. And things at the hotel are fine.”
“What do you make of it all, though?” I asked. “What do you think he wants, really?”
“Honestly?” Cooper shook his head. “I have no idea. I don’t know what his game is, but for now, I’m content to try to figure it out by playing along with it. Especially if it benefits me.”
I sighed. “Fine. We’ll go back and tell him we’ll do it.”
“But not until tomorrow,” Cooper said, and kissed me again.
We drove back up to Boston the next day, and arrived at Number Twelve Fenwick Street at the appointed time, with a bottle of wine (Dalton certainly seemed agreeable to alcohol) and some pastries from a bakery in the North End. As if we were just normal guests, attending a family dinner.
Arabella answered the door. She threw her arms—muscular and bared by a form-fitting tank top, bless her heart—around Cooper and hugged him hard. I stood by and tried to look serene.
“How long has it been?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Cooper. “Ten years? Twelve?”
“Too long,” said Arabella with a sigh. “But that’s the Blackwood way. Come in and make yourselves at home. My father was too intimidated by the idea of cooking for a chef, so he had dinner catered.” She grinned at me, like we were old friends, as she stepped aside to let us in. “That’s good news for all of us. You’ve seen how he keeps house when Serena’s away, and his cooking is even worse.”
I smiled back, and hoped it didn’t look too forced. Was she being friendly toward me for Cooper’s benefit? Or was there simply no more need for animosity, now that we’d done what she wanted and come to Boston? Come to think of it, had she really been as acrimonious last time as I remembered, or had my own hostility colored my perception?
I was spending too much time trying to work out what various Blackwoods were thinking, and what they were really like beneath the surface. It left me overanalyzing everything and trusting nothing, not even myself anymore.
As the door closed behind us, I reached out with my mind. The house felt much the same as it had the day before: watchful. Ready. Maybe even eager.
What are you waiting for? What do you want?
Is it the same thing Dalton wants?
All in all, I felt distinctly off-balance as I followed Arabella and Cooper into the dining room.
Dalton was already there, sitting with a cocktail. This room, at least, had been cleaned recently—I wondered if that was Arabella’s influence—and the table was already spread with what looked like Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, stuffing, cranberries, a big fluffy mound of mashed potatoes. Most of it was keeping warm in chafing dishes.
“Welcome back.” Dalton got up to shake Cooper’s hand and kiss my cheek. “Sorry to have you sit down to dinner immediately. The delivery came a bit early. We’ll linger over our port and dessert later.”
“This is quite a feast,” I said, once our plates were full. “It’s very kind of you.”
Dalton waved my thanks away. “It was high time for a feast, anyway. The house was getting restless.”
My mouth went dry, and I had to take a gulp of wine to get my bite of turkey down. By the time I was finished, Arabella was already talking, and it was too late to ask Dalton whether he meant that literally, or merely as a colorful phrase.
“No Halloween ball, I take it?” Arabella asked.
“Serena didn’t have time to plan it,” said Dalton.
Arabella looked at Cooper. “This house has been in his wife’s family for generations, did he tell you guys that?” When we both nodded she went on, “Well, they used to have this big, grand costume ball on Halloween, going back decades. But Serena just kind of stopped doing it. Too much work, I guess.” She shrugged. “Not that Beacon Hill will miss it so much. Halloween is bonkers here as it is.”
“Yes, well,” said Dalton. “I think we have more pressing matters to discuss than trick-or-treaters.” He gave Cooper a piercing look. “Do you have an answer for me?”
Dalton was so delighted—he flashed that Blackwood smile more than once—when he heard that we were willing to go after the East Seed, he immediately got up to write down the GPS coordinates of Alex’s last certain location, at a vineyard in the Finger Lakes Region in New York.
“He’ll have moved on since then,” said Cooper.
Dalton nodded as he sat back down. “If he’s smart, which I’ve generally known him to be. But that’s probably the best place to try to pick up his trail. We’ve had no luck electronically. He hasn’t used credit cards belonging to any of his known aliases, or anything like that.”
“How long since he went off the radar?” Cooper asked.
“Two days before Arabella went to see you.”
Cooper looked at me. I did a quick calculation. “So about three weeks,” I said.
“It was the same day he was ordered to come in,” Arabella said. “I was supposed to take over the East Seed, incidentally.”
“Congratulations,” said Cooper.
Arabella inclined her head in acknowledgment, and there, finally, was the woman I’d met in Bristol: the smug one.
But then, she surely had reason to be. I didn’t know the exact population of the Blackwood clan, but if it was big enough that intermarriage was not synonymous with inbreeding, it was big enough that being chosen to carry one of only four sapwood seeds must have been a great honor.
“Nice going,” I said, and hoped it didn’t sound grudging. Either she wasn’t really my enemy, or she was but I had to pretend to think she wasn’t. In either case, it was time to stop being petty. “All the carriers I’ve heard of so far have been men.”
“They are pretty sexist about it,” Arabella agreed.
“Be that as it may, I believe we’re veering off point,” said Dalton. “Alex sent us one final communication: I can’t be safe any other way. My love to my mother. We haven’t heard from him since.”
“I can’t be safe?” I repeated. “That doesn’t sound like somebody who ran away to rebel and join your enemies. It sounds like someone who ran away because they were scared.”
“I’m sure he was scared,” said Arabella. “And rightly so. By then he knew we were on to his relationship with Lily Wick.”
“Lily?” Cooper frowned. “I don’t think I know that one.”
“She’s several years younger than you,” Dalton said. “Younger even than Verity here, I believe.”
“Young enough that they were out of bird names?” I asked with a laugh.
Arabella returned my smile. “The bird names are just Cillian’s kids. I hear he’s down to one at most now, by the way.” She looked from me to Cooper. “Fantastic job. I wish I could’ve been there to help see the other two off.”
Cooper started to say something, but Dalton cleared his throat. “Off point and macabre. Must I
set up a kids’ table for you, Arabella?”
Arabella’s smile immediately fell away; I could actually see her face close, like a door slamming. She sat up straighter, and focused on cutting her turkey with precise, ladylike strokes of her knife.
Dalton watched her for a second, his expression solemn. By my count, that was the third time he’d shut her down, in the course of a single dinner. No wonder she needed to be arrogant with everyone else. I imagined she would not appreciate the pity I felt, but it would, at least, make my resolution to stop being petty easier to keep.
“In any case,” said Dalton, either unaware or unconcerned that he’d hurt his daughter, “what I think Arabella meant to say is that once their affair became known—to either the Blackwoods or the Wicks—Alex and Lily wouldn’t have felt safe from either clan. In that context, his words make perfect sense.”
Outwardly I agreed, but it still didn’t sit quite right with me. I had a lot of experience with choosing words, and the ones Alex Blackwood had chosen didn’t have the sound of someone acting out of love. For one thing, lovers thought in terms of we, not I. What he’d written sounded a lot more like fear.
“That’s what gives me hope that they haven’t given the seed to the Wicks, actually,” Dalton went on. “Possibly they’re both estranged from their families. In which case, the East Seed is the only leverage they have. They may try to barter it for their safety.”
“Which means your job is to make sure the Blackwoods are a bigger threat to that safety than the Wicks,” Arabella said to Cooper. Her voice was more subdued now, though the words were hard.
“No,” said Cooper. “My job is to recover the East Seed. I’ll do what’s necessary to get that done, but I’m nobody’s judge and jury. And I won’t hurt another Blackwood unless I absolutely have to.”
“Certainly not,” said Dalton. “I don’t want bloodshed to come of this any more than you do. And we’ll leave Alex in peace, provided we’re satisfied he poses no threat to us. But of course, if we feel he’s betrayed us to the Wicks, or is likely to, then we must do what we must to protect the clan and its secrets.”
“That’s up to the clan to decide,” said Cooper. “Verity and I will get the seed from him. Nothing more, not if I can help it.”
“Fair enough,” Dalton said, although he was giving Cooper a calculating look I didn’t like. I wasn’t so sure he was as interested in avoiding bloodshed as he wanted us to believe.
Are you hoping there will be a fight, Dalton?
Maybe even hoping one of them will end up dead?
Which one?
It should have taken only six or seven hours to drive from Boston to our destination in New York, but of course that didn’t account for the Blackwood method of travel. Which I don’t mind saying, I was growing a bit weary of.
On the other hand, if you must be in a car all day, every day, autumn in New England is the time and the place to do it. The scenery, at least, was breathtaking. I tried not to let the foliage distract me too much. When it wasn’t my turn to drive, I passed the time alternating between watching the mirrors for any signs of pursuit, and staring at the cardboard air freshener.
“Are you trying to burn a hole in that thing?” Cooper finally asked me.
“Actually, I was trying to move it, but that’s not a bad idea,” I said. “They say my father was good with fire.”
He gave me a confused look. “Didn’t I get scolded recently for suggesting you explore whether one of your father’s talents was hereditary? Or was it birds you objected to, specifically?”
I sighed. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About me not using my power.”
“Hey, I didn’t say you don’t use it,” he protested.
“Not using it more, then,” I said. “Or maybe it’s that I don’t use it aggressively enough. Story spells have been all well and good for the kind of thing I needed before, but now… now I seem to be someone with battles to fight.”
Cooper laughed. “So you intend to fight them with air fresheners?”
“I intend to fight them with useful skills,” I said. “The Wicks seem to be able to move things with their minds. Kestrel threw a whole dumpster at you in that alley. More than once.”
“Maybe that’s an inherited talent,” Cooper said. “Telekinesis, or whatever you call it. It’s not regular magic, is it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of experience with that kind of thing. Most of the witches I know work with props of some kind. They’re good at a particular thing, like incantations, or potions, or poppets. Doing anything with just your will, and nothing to focus it, takes a lot of power.”
“But you can do that tree-speaking thing with just your will.”
I nodded. “And you would think a tree would have more will to oppose me than an air freshener. So I figured if I can move a branch, maybe I can learn to move other things, too.”
But try as I might, I couldn’t make that air freshener do a thing. Or anything else in the car.
My magical shortcomings were soon pushed out of my mind by more pressing concerns. On our second day on the road, coming back down the coast of Maine after skirting the border of Canada the day before, I noticed a battered old SUV with a Minnesota license plate. Cooper was driving at the time, so keeping an eye on the rear view was my job. Out-of-state plates were, of course, a common enough occurrence on highways. But unless it was an eighteen-wheeler, I noted anything that came from outside New England in a steno pad we kept in the glove compartment, just in case I saw it again later.
Which I did that evening, as we were doubling back through Vermont. I knew it was the same one, but I still checked the plate against the notebook to make sure. I’d made a mistake once before, and ended up horribly carsick for no reason.
“That’s definitely it,” I said tightly. I wasn’t actually scared—not yet—but I was a bit concerned about how my still-sore back would take what I knew was coming next.
Cooper nodded, serious but not alarmed, like I’d said something about the road conditions or incoming bad weather. “Hang on, then.”
He moved into the left lane and sped up. We were nearly at the next exit when he slashed across and jerked the wheel, turning sharply onto the shoulder and the gravelly weeds beyond. Our rented sedan didn’t take well to the bumpy terrain we half-skidded across—my back and stomach didn’t much like it either—before Cooper careened onto the off-ramp and straightened out, never slowing down.
I craned my neck to keep my eyes on the highway and the SUV. It flew on by without exiting.
There was a bend ahead—immediately ahead—that I was sure would be the death of us. I figured screaming wouldn’t do much for Cooper’s concentration, so I just closed my eyes and prayed.
We made it, around the bend and up to a traffic light. Cooper chose a direction at random and drove around wherever we were for a while, until I could be sure I saw no sign of the SUV.
“Which direction were we headed when we got off the highway?” he asked. “I’ve lost track.”
“East.”
“Okay. West it is.”
He made his way back to the highway, two exits away from where we’d gotten off.
“Cooper!” I clutched at his arm.
The Minnesota SUV was on the shoulder, idling with its flashers on, a short distance from the on-ramp.
Cooper didn’t hesitate or change course. He merely put his blinker on, and turned onto the highway.
I tried to get a look into the SUV as we passed it, but the windows were dark, and I couldn’t make out the figure behind the wheel, apart from being fairly certain he was male. Nor did I catch whether there were any passengers.
Cooper merged calmly and without undue speed into traffic.
I was feeling somewhat less calm. “How could he possibly have just been waiting for us there?”
The SUV merged in behind us. From this angle, I could see there was indeed someone beside the driver.
“Maybe he’s better
at following us than we are at spotting him,” said Cooper. “He could’ve gotten ahead of us, then just waited at the next highway entrance for us to pass.”
Our pursuers settled in two cars back.
“Or he could’ve just gotten lucky,” Cooper went on. “Took his best guess at where we’d try to get back on, and waited there. Or maybe he has a seer or a witch with him.”
“A psychic, maybe,” I said, a bit soothed by Cooper’s easy, conversational tone. “I don’t know of any spells that will whisper a person’s GPS coordinates into your ear.”
“Speaking of spells, what did the one you gave me this morning say? I tucked it away without reading it.”
“Same as it always says. That you come to no harm on your journey.”
“Do you have enough ink to write new ones tonight?”
“I’m just about out, but I can use plain blood.”
“Let’s switch that up to not being followed, and see if it works better.”
I nodded. It wasn’t a bad idea. If their magic was focused on tracking us, rather than hurting us, my protection spell wouldn’t be in direct opposition to it. But we would see how well it worked for them when I pitted my will straight-up against theirs.
Whoever they might be. I wondered whether Talon Wick was one of the people inside that SUV.
Of course, this idea of writing new spells made the crucial assumption that we would make it to someplace where I could actually sit down, draw my blood, and write. And that I would have intact limbs left to do it with.
We were still in the right lane, and so was the SUV. I clutched the handle above my door, and braced myself as best I could, considering my back, for Cooper to speed up and start swerving again.
But he didn’t. He drove on at a staid nine miles over the speed limit, always in the slow lane, for at least half an hour, until even I wasn’t sure what he was up to.
“Trying to lull them into a false sense of security?” I asked finally.
“Something like that.”
He passed another exit, and then another, and another after that. I wasn’t even sure what state we were in by that point. I’d been too busy looking in the rear view mirror—the SUV stayed precisely two cars behind us at all times—to read any of the signs ahead.
Gathering Black (Devilborn Book 2) Page 6