This is my story now.
I stepped in closer and put my arms around him. My face against his neck, I breathed deeply again. I didn’t smell blood and sweat and rage, as I had a moment ago.
I smelled butter and freshly ground black pepper.
I’m the storyteller here.
I held on tight, wrapping my arms around his back, sliding my hands up the inside of his shirt to feel his warm, bare skin. He whispered something in my ear.
My story…
And then we were kissing, touching, desperate for one another. And it felt so real.
Oh, but this was just as dangerous an illusion as the one that came before it. Maybe—probably—even more dangerous.
Because how could I possibly will this story to end?
I might stay trapped forever, with what felt exactly like a living, breathing Cooper. Until Wick came back and came into the closet for me.
But it wouldn’t be a bad way to die…
No. You owe the real Cooper more than this.
With great reluctance, and possibly more effort than anything in my life had ever cost me, I pulled away from my story-Cooper.
“Sweetheart,” I whispered. “Hand me the seeds, will you?”
He gave me that Blackwood smile. I swallowed hard, then bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from telling him never mind, and pulling him back to me.
“Sure thing,” Cooper said.
He reached into his pocket. I didn’t look down to see the two hard objects he pressed into my hand. I was too busy looking at his face, memorizing it.
Knowing it was the last time I would ever see it.
Too soon, he was gone.
(gone forever)
I was standing once again in the dark closet, cramped up tight against the shelves with the door closed. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel the two lumps in my hand; lumps that I knew would look like amber.
I had the South and East Seeds.
For a second, it felt like I was really going to get away with it. All I had to do was sneak out of the house, and I was home free.
Then I opened the closet door, and found Jeeves sitting at Cillian Wick’s desk. Humming his ridiculous song. And pointing a gun at my chest.
This was my first time seeing him up close, and I had to admit, he was a sight to behold. Even with my mind muddled by rising panic, I took in the details of his bizarre face. Unnaturally round. Unnaturally smooth. The skin almost gray. And then he smiled, and I saw the teeth.
They really were long, and they really were sharp. It was like looking at a child’s drawing of a monster.
He is a monster. He (maybe) killed Cooper.
But he wasn’t killing me. He stayed in the chair, staring, smiling, pointing that gun. But he didn’t shoot it.
No doubt he had orders not to. Cillian had told me outright that he needed me alive for the present. There was an advantage I could use.
“The seeds, if you please,” Jeeves said in his deep, melodious voice. He jerked his head sideways. “You may put them on the desk.”
Another advantage. He was underestimating me. If he was smart, he would have searched me first, before he let me reach into my pockets.
“And don’t bother with a gun, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “I have it on good authority that you’re a poor marksman. I assure you, you would be dead before you ever managed to hit me.”
That was almost certainly true. Which was why I wasn’t reaching for the gun. I slid the knife I’d taken from the basement into my sleeve, then put my hands up to show I only held the seeds.
Jeeves jerked his head toward the desk again.
I stepped forward and set them down, making sure I stayed on the right side of the desk, keeping my path to the chair clear. The distance between us was much shorter now. Short enough to be crossed in one move, if I was quick and agile enough.
Jeeves gave the seeds a hungry look, then grinned back at me with those awful teeth. “Did you really think you could do all of that without me noticing?”
I wasn’t listening. I was studying his hand, the one holding the gun, while trying to look like I was doing no such thing. It relaxed, almost imperceptibly, as he gloated over his prize. He lowered his arm, not quite pointing the gun at me anymore. This was my chance.
Never underestimate the power of surprise, Cooper had told me once. The extra second it takes them to react could be the second that saves your life.
Let’s hope so.
Jeeves opened his mouth again, no doubt to give me one of those boastful speeches so adored by villains everywhere.
I hated those.
I lunged and at the same time, shook the knife down my sleeve and into my hand. Without hesitation, I plunged it into the side of his neck, then yanked it across his throat. Just the right spot, just how Cooper had shown me in that same self-defense lesson.
Thanks, honey.
I was fast, and I had that power of surprise on my side, but Jeeves still got a shot off. It didn’t hit me; he was already recoiling from my blade by then, and trying to push me away, and probably in a bit of a panic, too, over the fact that I was opening his throat. Or maybe it was the spell in my pocket that kept the bullet away.
There was quite a bit of blood. I left the knife where it was, and backed away as quickly as I could.
Cooper had killed Kestrel and Falcon, and Lily Wick, too. Talon had died at my behest, but not by my hand. Number Twelve had killed him. Jeeves’s was the first life I ever took directly.
To this day, it gives me no pause.
There was no time, however, to contemplate how vengeance felt. The gunfire had likely drawn some notice. I needed to get out.
I grabbed the seeds back off the desk, then ran hard and fast, down the stairs and through the hall, not bothering to try to tread lightly. My goal now was speed, not stealth.
All I had to do was get outside. I pulled my phone—Lance’s phone—out of my pocket and held it at the ready, my thumb hovering over the one-touch app that would message Phineas.
I flung open the door to the entry room. And there was Cillian Wick himself.
Now where have you been, if not at the Bristol town line? Not in your office, guarding the seeds. What was more important than that?
He was flanked by three large, armed men. Their guns were all pointed at me.
But they didn’t shoot. Cillian still wanted me alive, if he could get me that way. That wouldn’t stop him from taking me prisoner and draining my vitality, if I didn’t do something quickly.
I could have run again, tried to make it to another exit, but there was no point. I heard footsteps above, shouts from somewhere deeper in the house. By now, Wick would have me all but surrounded.
I had my own gun, of course, but I would hardly survive a shootout against these odds. Protection spells and luck could only smile on me so many times.
“The seeds, please, Verity,” Cillian said. “I don’t believe you phantasms have the power to heal bullet wounds like your vital friends.”
No, but I have other powers. Recently discovered ones that you know nothing about yet.
Cillian knew that I excelled at place-magic, and that my story spells were often tied to that. He must have felt perfectly safe, on his own turf, in a place he knew would never cooperate with me. He didn’t know that Number Twelve had taught me that I didn’t need cooperation anymore.
And he didn’t know that he himself had taught me, only a short while ago, to be an illusionist.
This place might not be friendly to me, but it was awfully predisposed to illusions.
With a noise like an explosion, the ceiling caved in.
I focused my will on the story, not until it came true, but until it appeared to.
Two of the men were crushed beneath the perceived weight of the collapsing ceiling they saw. The third dove out of the way, then turned to try to help his comrades.
But I knew the confusion wouldn’t distract Cillian for long, and he was the one stand
ing in front of the door. I seized on what I knew would be the fastest and most effective solution.
We’d already taken three of Cillian Wick’s children from him. He only had one left.
Harry was on the floor in the hallway, bloodied and dead.
I pressed the button to summon Phineas, then stepped aside so Wick would see the corpse—or the appearance of one—behind me.
With a cry, acting on pure instinct as I’d guessed he would, Cillian pushed me down and rushed forward to take his lifeless boy into his arms.
One more false explosion to add to the confusion, and then I scrambled to my feet and out the door.
A couple of shots came from behind me, but it was already too late. Phineas was there, against the wall outside, grasping my shoulder. The cold Pennsylvania air shifted and changed. A glimpse of the tower, an enormous blue moon, and then, more easily this time than the previous two, it was over.
We were standing on the grounds outside the Mount Phearson, blinking under a bright Carolina blue sky, looking up at the vast white hotel.
We were home.
Without Cooper.
Cooper wasn’t there.
Only a couple of hours had passed. It was still morning, the sun still shining, a hint of the spring to come in the scent of the breeze. Everything was as we’d left it.
And Cooper is gone.
I took no joy from having a pocket full of sapwood seeds, nor from the relieved smiles of Lydia and Arabella as we walked into the lobby. Lydia threw her arms around Phineas and kissed him soundly. I couldn’t bear to watch.
Arabella seemed to understand, and moved between us, blocking my view of the happy couple. “So?” she asked.
“So, we need to go down to the basement,” I said. “But I need my phone back first.”
I opened my text messages and tapped Cillian’s name. There was the grisly picture of Cooper he’d sent the day we broke the curse. The memory almost made me stop what I was about to do.
Let him suffer a while longer. It’s no more than he deserves.
That might be true of Cillian, but it wasn’t true of Harry, surely. The boy with the red glasses was not nice, in the end, but he was still just a boy.
I sighed, and texted Cillian: Harry is fine. You’ll find him in your basement, strapped to that horrible chair over the drain.
Without waiting for a reply, I went down to my own basement, Arabella close at my heels.
“Did anyone show up at the town line, by the way?” I asked her. “Did he send anyone?”
“Not that I saw. Unless you want to count Asher Glass, telling me not to loiter.”
I waved a few staff members away as I strode through the laundry area. Judging by their expressions, I must have looked a mess, or maybe a little crazy. I don’t imagine Jeeves’s blood on my jacket helped. They quickly left us alone.
I punched in the latest code and then, using a towel to avoid touching the iron directly, opened the vault and stepped inside. As always, there was nothing in there but a small occasional table, on top of which sat two chunks of amber, similar to those that currently resided in my pocket. The West Seed, green inside its golden armor, and the blue North.
I put their crimson and yellow brothers beside them. All four seeds, together at last.
But I didn’t linger to admire the effect. It was far too bittersweet—or perhaps just bitter—a victory to enjoy. Arabella stood by the table a bit longer, but finally followed me out of the vault.
“We did it. You did it.” She sounded disbelieving, almost shell-shocked. I knew the feeling. “They’re all safe.”
“Safe for now.” I closed the heavy iron door. “But Cooper is gone.” I shook my head and then, maybe to try to force myself to finally believe it, said the thing I was really thinking, the thing I feared was true. “Cooper is dead.”
Arabella put her arm around me.
“I know he is,” she said.
We won. We did everything we set out to do from the first moment I had the idea of creating a sanctuary.
By all accounts, it was a happy ending.
Or so people kept telling me. But of course, they’d already mourned Cooper. They’d said their goodbyes at that stupid party, but the grief was still fresh for me. Still a shock, one that even then, I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe. Everybody said that was a defense mechanism.
But happy or sad, the story was over, or so I thought. All that remained was to tell it.
On the Sunday after I brought all the seeds together in the Mount Phearson’s vault, I stood in the Dogwood room again, this time with a lovely table laid out with bite-sized snacks and pastries to smooth the way, and told the crowd of believers exactly who Cillian Wick was, and what he wanted from Bristol.
I told them everything. The war between feeders and vitals, and how it had destroyed their native world. The sapwood seeds, and what would happen if they were ever allowed to become a sapwood forest. I told them that if Cillian Wick had his way, everyone in Bristol would be drained of their vitality on a daily basis, enslaved, powerless, serving as batteries for his clan.
Marjory Smith and her coven laughed in my face, and loudly declared me to be insane. Many of the others present seemed to be leaning toward that same conclusion. I couldn’t blame them. It was a crazy story.
I showed them a picture of the seeds, carefully taken so as to reveal nothing about their location. Of that, I would say only that I was keeping them safe.
The only other evidence I had to support my claims was a real live vital, so I wanted her to have as big an impact as possible. I had Caleb shoot Arabella in the stomach. Right there, in the front of the room. Then I pulled Ian Withers from his seat and had him do it, too, just to prove it wasn’t a trick. Lance was most unhappy about the blood stains.
It was nice of Arabella to play along. Gut shots hurt.
The crowd watched in awe as the wounds healed themselves. Arabella never so much as stumbled.
“So she can’t be killed,” Tricia Landry breathed. She was looking at Arabella like she was a superhero, or maybe some sort of deity.
“She can, just not easily,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Marjory, a nasty smile spreading over her face. “I hear a headshot will end her kind easily enough.” She watched me carefully, waiting for a reaction.
I gave her none. I just looked away.
Dan the librarian, however, did not look away. He stared at Marjory and said, “Wait, what do you mean, you’ve heard? You knew she wasn’t human? You knew about these vitals and feeders all along?”
It was beautiful. Marjory’s inability to stop herself from rubbing salt in my wound was her downfall.
“I’m aware of beings and worlds that are beyond us, yes, but that doesn’t mean any of the rest of this ridiculous story is true,” Marjory said. “Killer plants? Evil forests? Really. Verity has quite an imagination, I’ll credit her for that.”
But it was too late for backpedaling. I pegged the number of people who left that room believing me at more than half.
I doubted it would be enough. I thought it likely that they would still invite Cillian Wick into Bristol, at least to hear his side of things. If they did, I might try to sneak into that meeting myself, just to see what he would say, what he would pretend to offer.
I couldn’t stop him from coming, but it seemed they still didn’t know that. If they asked me to lift the spell and allow him into town, I would simply agree, give it a few hours or a day, maybe, for effect, and then say that I’d done so. Let them think I was being cooperative and reasonable and had nothing to hide.
Whether or not I was hiding something seemed to be a question of particular interest to the Garden Club. They began stalking me even more than usual, following me around, turning up at The Witch’s Brew and the library at the same times I did. It couldn’t have been easy to coordinate; I was about town a lot. Trying to escape that awful silence where Cooper’s voice belonged. I could never manage
it, though. It was always there.
Asher took to visiting the Mount Phearson daily. He would stroll around the lobby, sometimes go upstairs and roam the halls. One morning I caught him outside my door.
“This is private property, Officer Glass,” I said. “Unless you have a warrant, I suggest you move on.”
Asher gave me his perfect and nauseating smile. I resisted the urge to punch it off his face. “I hear your boyfriend’s dead.” He leaned forward slightly, watching for my reaction, just as Marjory had done at the meeting.
I kept my face as still as I could, and walked past him.
“He’s coming, you know,” Asher called after me. “Cillian Wick is coming for you.”
Let him come.
So when Cillian himself called me that very night, I assumed it was to discuss his triumphant march into Bristol. But he insisted he was merely calling to thank me, for sparing his son, and for revealing the boy’s location so soon after I left.
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t much like that basement,” I said. “I didn’t see any need for him to be down there any longer than he had to be.”
“You sound almost fond of Harrier.”
I didn’t respond to that. Cillian would know that Harry had helped us in the past—maybe his punishment for that help was what had made the boy so hostile toward me the last time—but I saw no need to expound on it or get the poor kid in more trouble.
After a second or two of silence Cillian said, “I’m proud to say Harrier has a bit of the Sight himself, you know. I had him working a bit with Serena, to try to develop it. How he hated her. I underestimated how much, and how far he would be willing to go to get rid of her. But once she was gone, his loyalties came back in line.”
Ah, so that hostility formed well before I saw it.
“Meaning you want me to know that the second time he helped us get out of the compound, it was on your orders,” I said.
“I told you, it was in my best interests for you to break the curse and stay alive, for the moment.”
“I hope you’re not expecting gratitude.”
“From you? Certainly not. You seem to have none of the manners you Southerners are so celebrated for. You also stood me up for our meeting.”
Witch Bound (Devilborn Book 3) Page 20