Crossroads Burning

by Nash, Layla

  I stared at him, too stunned to react, and he managed to look serious for so long I started to question my own sanity and believe him again. Did he really think I wanted to sleep with him and used the danger we all faced as a pretext? It wasn’t a bad plan, all things considered. If we hadn’t had a bunch of chaperones after the fight with the werewolves in the Crossroads, I probably would have jumped into his sleeping bag faster than he unzipped it. But that didn’t mean I expected to just summon him with orders to bring liquor and his dick to my house as fast as possible.

  When I still said nothing, Lincoln’s smile broke through and he reached out to squeeze my wrist, his fingertips resting against my pulse point. “I’m kidding, Luckett. But I should check for a pulse, just in case you—”

  I smacked his shoulder and almost threw the ice cubes in his face. “That isn’t funny!”

  “It’s pretty damn funny from where I’m sitting, most particularly because you were actually thinking about it.” His grin went from mischievous to a little more sultry and unpredictable. “Imagine that. Do you want to make me breakfast, Anastasia?”

  I did. I really, really did. Well, I wanted him to make me breakfast, but we could figure that out later. My whole face went hot again, and not from the whiskey. As his grin drizzled across his mouth like warm honey, every part of me got flustered. I fumbled as I tried to pick up my glass again, and nearly knocked the crackers to the floor. Even my chair creaked dangerously as I leaned too far to the side and endangered the structural integrity of the arm. “I do not. I certainly don’t—”

  That just made him chuckle in that slow, husky way that sent an arrow of want right to my stomach, low and heavy and just aching to be stroked a little. “Why do you think I hauled ass out here with four bottles of whiskey for the two of us, Anastasia? I won’t lie and say I wasn’t hoping for at least a little making out. If you want more, then I’m all for it.”

  “I’m sure you would be,” I managed to say, and despite the shiver of excitement and the immediate calculus of whether I could sneak him upstairs to my room without waking Liv—and whether Lincoln and I could possibly be quiet enough not to wake the entire house, including Gran in the attic—I knew I couldn’t just pretend that was why I’d called him, fuck his brains out, and then tell him tomorrow that we’d discovered our long-lost ancestor had created the werewolf curse. “And I-I might not object to that, either. But that’s not why I called you. Even if that’s why you answered.”

  “I’ll always answer when you call, darlin’.”

  I didn’t mind when he called me darling, not at all. Not ever. “It’s about Frank.”

  The smile faded and Lincoln nodded, pouring himself more before he leaned back in his chair and watched me with an expression much closer to the federal agent than the guy who wanted to get laid. “I suspected there might be something else going on with that guy. Did your sister turn him into a frog and he accidentally turned back? Were-frog?”

  He was trying to joke, but when I didn’t smile or laugh or immediately dismiss the claim, his expression grew more guarded still. “Did one of your sisters change him into something?”

  “Technically, yes.” I took a deep breath and finished my drink before I managed to steel myself into telling him what I’d promised myself I had to. We’d technically changed him to human. “But this is…this isn’t normal, Lincoln, and I’m not sure how much to tell you because my sisters don’t know I’m telling you anything, but since this is my mess—you’re my mess—I have to clean it up and I can’t wait for—”

  “I’m your mess to clean up?” His eyebrow, the one with the scar running through it, arched rakishly as he poured both of us more whiskey.

  “Well, yes. I invited the vampire inside, as it were. I showed you the Crossroads and the cave and…and…everything, and most assuredly we wouldn’t ever do that normally. So you’re a bit of a mess that I’ve made. Not a large one, not really.” Not yet, I added silently to myself. Time would tell.

  “Go on.”

  The tone didn’t give me much to work on, and when I dared to look at him, neither did his face. I cleared my throat and seized my glass. More liquid courage, more truths spilled. “But you’re only part of it. So I don’t really know what I should tell you and what I should leave out, but since we’re all…we’re kind of all in this together at this point, except for Heathrow and his guys, I don’t think it’s as much of a problem. You knowing. That’s not much of a problem.”

  Lincoln studied me a little oddly, trying to follow my logic, then waved his drink in the direction of the shiny new SUV he’d parked so close to the house. “Should I have brought the rest of the team? Do they need to know as well?”

  “That’s one of my questions for you.” My hands trembled as I put the glass down and reached for some crackers, since I could feel the drink going to my head already. One hamburger for dinner wasn’t quite enough to hold up against pounding four or five shots of damn good whiskey. “I don’t know. I think I know how they’ll react, and it won’t be good, and that’s why I’m telling you first.”

  “I generally don’t hide things from my team, Anastasia. Just so you know.”

  “I know.” But he hadn’t heard this yet. He didn’t know how bad it could get. I rubbed my palms on the thighs of my pajama pants, shivering a little in the growing chill. “Frank isn’t Frank. His name is Ronan. Ronan Luckett.”

  And I braced for the explosion.

  Chapter 45

  It never happened. Lincoln watched me warily, like he was also expecting a hell of a lot more than he got, so for a long while we just stared at each other.

  Finally, he said, “But there aren’t any male Lucketts.”

  “No, not now. But there used to be.” Apparently. “He’s old. Very old. Hundreds of years, really. And he’s a complete asshole and really rather unpleasant, but he’s a relative.”

  “So you keep him around, fair enough. Why was he naked in the shed?”

  And that was the tricky part. “He wasn’t in human form when we found him.”

  Once again, Lincoln looked at me as if I made a mountain out of a molehill. He even slowed down his words as he spoke, in case I’d gone all fuzzy from the whiskey. “So he’s a shifter. Very well. Sometimes the old ones go a little crazy and prefer to stay as animals, but that’s nothing that can’t be addressed. We’ve got tricks for managing the old ones that don’t involve nudity and outdoor storage structures.”

  “Not…not exactly,” I said. I put my glass down so I could brace for the really unpleasant reaction that had to be coming my way. My throat prickled and—Nona save me from myself—my eyes burned with tears and then I found myself practically crying as I looked at him and tried to think of every way to not say what I had to say.

  Both his eyebrows rose in alarm when he saw the tears, and Lincoln immediately put his drink down and reached for my arms, trying to drag me into his lap for a hug. “Jesus, Luckett, it’ll be okay. What’s wrong? Why are you so upset?”

  Because it would get us all killed, maybe. I managed to stay in my chair, though I didn’t mind his gentle grip on my upper arms, and for a long time I just wiped away the fresh tears that dribbled down my cheeks. Very appealing. I finally pressed my fists against my eyes so I wouldn’t see his face, and took a shaky breath.

  “He wasn’t a shifter. He was the werewolf. The one that was on our property and I said ran off. We trapped him in the shed and tried to figure out how to save him, and we were just doing our last best effort when Heathrow drove up and the storm rolled in and our magic kind of... twisted and everything went sideways.”

  Silence greeted me, and not even the crickets chirped from underneath the porch. I couldn’t look at him. His hands stopped moving on my arms in a comforting chafe, but gripped my biceps a little more strongly. “He was a what?”

  “A werewolf,” I said, barely more than a whisper. “I didn’t want to kill him, not after what happened in the Crossroads, so my sisters helped me se
date him, and we trapped him in the shed to buy some time so we could do research on how to change him back.”

  “No one changes back,” Lincoln said, his voice strange. I still didn’t dare look at him. The fact that he hadn’t thrown me to the ground and handcuffed me was probably a good sign. “It’s impossible.”

  “It’s not,” I said. I pulled the small book from my back pocket and held it out, finally brave enough to see his expression. There was nothing there. No emotion. No disbelief or mockery, no condemnation or even condescension. I cleared my throat and suddenly second-guessed my decision to share the book. But it was part of the proof – and he was a druid. He would know what the book meant. If he understood how it all got started, maybe he could also see how to manage it going forward. “I asked for help from the ancestors and the cave gave me this book, and it didn’t have any writing with it until we were trying to un-curse Ronan, and then I was so afraid it showed me this.”

  Lincoln didn’t touch it, didn’t release his hold on me as I turned the book and showed him the faint, spidery writing on the pages. He glanced at it and then back at me. “I need you to back up. A werewolf was on your property. After we were attacked by them in the Crossroads and you were nearly killed and almost turned into one yourself. A werewolf attacked here and your first thought was to trap it in your shed. Do I have that right?”

  “Well, technically...”

  His fingers tightened on my arms and I trailed off. I couldn’t read his face. I couldn’t see whether he was furious or disappointed or ready to arrest me. Maybe it was a druid trick. Lincoln took a deep breath before going on. “So you trapped the werewolf in your shed and sedated it. And then attempted to use magic to remove the curse or turn it back to human.”

  “Yes. But we didn’t just attempt it. We did it. I did it.” I didn’t mind taking the credit, since it would also mean taking the blame. Liv and Lucia held the wards, that was for damn certain, and bought me the time to work the magic. But it was my magic all over the shed and Ronan and everything else. It was my crime, if that’s what it ended up being. “I changed him back just as Heathrow showed up, and then you guys were there and we didn’t know what would end up coming out of the shed.”

  Lincoln released me and I fell back, since his grip had been keeping me upright as all my strength went into making my mouth move to say those unbelievable words. He carefully poured himself more to drink, drank it, poured more, and drank that. Then he set the glass and the bottle aside and scrubbed his hands over his face and into his hair, until it stuck out in wild clumps. “You think you turned a werewolf back into human.”

  “I don’t think we did it, I know we did it.” I shut the book, my hands trembling from holding it for so long. “We did.”

  “And you named him Frank and let him stay in your house while I and my team sat on your porch. You didn’t think to say something then?”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  The fact that he reached for the whiskey once more told me all I needed to know. Lincoln leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the table, shaking his head. “Luckett, this isn’t…there is nothing that says this is possible. Nothing.”

  “Not everything is known and predictable,” I said quietly. “If you’d asked me a month ago whether I expected to be sitting on my front porch sipping whiskey with someone like you, I’d’ve laughed in your face and sent you to the doctor to have your head checked.”

  “Nice attempt at flattery, Luckett,” he said, though some of the tension in his shoulders eased. He sighed again and rubbed his face, reaching for the bottle. “And now this werewolf is claiming to be an ancient ancestor of yours?”

  “Yes. Sort of. He says his name is Ronan Luckett, and the last thing he remembers is being blamed for bad magic in Salem. After leaving England due to witch trials.” And I held my breath, waiting for the laughter and him walking away forever.

  Instead, Lincoln nodded along like it was exactly what he’d expected to hear. “Sure, sure. Why not. Your ancestors started the witch hunts in Salem back in the seventeenth century. Makes sense.”

  I eyed him for a long time before I sighed and gave up. “You don’t believe me. You don’t believe any of it.”

  “I believe that you believe it,” he said. Lincoln reached for my hand but I pulled away, anger giving me the strength to turn. He grumbled and persisted, dragging my hand into his and my arm practically over his chest, and his other hand cupped my cheek so I had to face him. “Anastasia, I believe you wanted to save the werewolves so badly that you convinced yourself it was possible. Either he wasn’t really a werewolf and you turned a rogue shifter back to human, or there is something else going on. It’s just not possible that he was a werewolf.”

  “What would it take for you to believe me?”

  “What would it take for you to believe that the sun revolves around the Earth?” Lincoln sighed, his thumb stroking my cheek in a caress I might have turned into and adored if he’d believed me even a tiny bit. “Babe, it’s just not... I don’t know.”

  “He claims he was a druid. Is a druid.” I wondered if maybe that would give him a point of interest, if he’d be more willing to believe it if it were druid magic that managed it instead of witch magic. Maybe all druids shared Ronan’s view of witches, and Lincoln was just better at hiding it.

  His thumb paused, and Lincoln’s eyes narrowed as he watched me. “He said he’s a druid?”

  “Yes, and that he was three hundred years old the last time he knew what year it was.” I sat back, successfully worming out of his hold. I needed more to drink, since it still hurt a little too much that Lincoln didn’t believe me. “They fled England to avoid the witch trials, then landed in Salem Town and tried to make sure they were prosperous but were caught up in the witch hunt there. They fled west and that was about all he knew. Has a hell of an attitude.”

  “And he’s sleeping in there now?” Lincoln peered over his shoulder at the door to the house, gauging the threat from the presence of another druid. “You took him at his word and that was enough to allow him in the house with you and your sisters?”

  I concentrated on the label of one of the other whiskey bottles, pretending to study it so I wouldn’t have to face the look on his face. “Yep. All three of us fools, I guess.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Anastasia,” he said.

  Lincoln remained quiet for a long time, though he helped me open a new bottle and try another one of Heathrow’s expensive whiskeys. He didn’t try to touch me again, and I felt the absence like a chill wind. Even if I was a little mad at him for not immediately understanding what I needed him to understand. I’d eaten a couple of crackers and tried the new whiskey, which was really a bourbon and didn’t taste bad at all, by the time Lincoln took a deep breath and eyed me sideways. “I don’t think you’re foolish, any of you. I think you’ve been on your own for a long time, and not just the three of you—the whole family. It’s no wonder, after generations under siege, that you’d evolve a unique worldview. And if you’ve never known that something is impossible, maybe it becomes... less impossible.”

  My throat closed a little as my heart jumped. Did he believe me? Did he at least imagine it could be true? I hadn’t thought much past him believing me, and I didn’t have a backup plan for if he didn’t. Or if he decided to arrest me. Overall I hadn’t thought it through at all. And the whiskey definitely didn’t help. The porch started to tilt as everything else got warm and fuzzy.

  “I don’t entirely believe you,” he said. “I don’t want you to think that I’ve bought this all, hook line and sinker, because I haven’t. Letting you think otherwise would be disingenuous. But I’d like to talk to this guy before I make a decision. If he’s a druid, I’ll be able to tell. And if he’s telling the truth about that, I could probably believe more of the other things he’s saying. Although maybe not the werewolf thing.”

  “He created the curse,” I said. I didn’t touch the book or offer it to him again.
“Or so he claims. He’d used it before. He didn’t believe that it could have stuck to or affected him, but he also didn’t believe that witches could have freed him. So overall he’s a lot of fun to be around.”

  Lincoln snorted, shaking his head, and leaned back in his chair. “Many witches and druids have claimed to be the originators of many powerful spells, just for the cachet of bringing powerful magic into the world, but very few provided any proof of their capabilities. I suspect he’ll be the same.”

  “Except we have his book of knowledge,” I said, and once more drew the book out of my pocket. I dropped it in Lincoln’s lap so he couldn’t refuse to look at it, and I gazed out across the front lawn at a few shadows moving closer while he frowned and flipped through the pages. “Near the middle, there’s a couple of pages with writing and some drawings of wolves. From what I can decipher from his scribblings, it sure sounds like how someone would be cursed to be a werewolf.”

  Lincoln shook his head, about to close the book and toss it back to me, but I gave him a dark look and pointed at the pages. “Read it, Lincoln. Please.”

  He looked at me for a long time, clearly weighing what kind of damage would be done if he refused, then he leaned back so the meager light on the porch would be cast across the watery writing. After a while of squinting at the book, turning it back and forth, he went still and made a thoughtful noise.

  I couldn’t look at him or my heart would have jumped up my throat and burst out my nose from worry. Instead I just sipped the whiskey and debated which bottle I should ask to keep, if Lincoln was feeling generous with Heathrow’s whiskey. Not that I’d be able to explain the pricey bottle to my sisters.

  My butt had almost fallen asleep and my fingers started to go numb, even with the whiskey, by the time Lincoln took a deep breath. “Well. That’s interesting.”