by Holley Trent
When Gail opened her eyes to the sound of Let’s Make a Deal and feminine groaning, her vision focused on one pair of feet in trouser socks, the owner’s legs crossed at the ankles at the foot of the bed, and another pair of red-and-white polka-dot socks she recognized as a past Christmas present to Ellery.
She struggled to sit up, only to have Candy Corn’s tail swoosh in her face.
“What time is it?” she croaked. Her voice sounded rough and abused, and perhaps rightfully so. It’d been a long time since she’d had a cry that hard and that long. Her throat was tight and seemed eager to close in on itself.
She put her spine against the headboard and watched Agatha lean over and pick up the digital clock on the nightstand.
“Just past one.”
“AM?”
“PM, dear. It’s afternoon. You were out cold and needed the rest, so we didn’t wake you.”
“Oh.” She ground her palms against her sleep-crusted eyes and let the yawn tickling her nose out through a wide-open mouth. “Did I miss anything?”
Ellery grunted. “Candy Corn and Pumpkin Pie are in the midst of a turf war over the single litter box.”
Gail smiled in spite of her sullen mood. “Who’s winning?”
“There are no winners of a cat fight when there’s litter all over the bathroom floor for me to clean up.”
“Sorry.”
“Eh. It’s temporary.”
“Anything else?” She could just come right out and ask, Where’s Claude? but after her embarrassing breakdown, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to see her. If Ellery volunteered the information, though, she certainly wouldn’t cut her off.
“Jason might bring his girlfriend here.”
“He has a girlfriend?” Stupid question. Of course he did. He was charming, self-sufficient, considerate, and had the tall, dark, and handsome thing on lock.
“Yeah. In Ohio. She’s probably freaking out because of the way Gulielmus made him disappear and won’t believe Jason is alive until she sees him in the flesh.”
“I’m sure some of the tenants of Mortonville will be very sad to hear he’s off the market.”
“Hell, I’m sad.” Ellery huffed. “These guys set the bar pretty high.”
“I don’t think you’ll be on the market long,” Agatha said. She crossed her legs in the other direction and squinted at the television screen.
“Why? What’d you do?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should always believe me. Unlike some people, I don’t skirt around the truth.”
“Okay, then what is it you’re going to do?”
“Why are you girls so skeptical?”
“Most be an inherited trait from somewhere down the line.”
Agatha didn’t even try to refute that one.
“So …” Gail started. “Any news about … Ross?”
“Oh.” Ellery straightened up, and nudged Candy Corn out of her cozy recline between the two of them in the process. “I don’t know. The boys were working up a plan of some sort. I haven’t spoken to them since breakfast. Clarissa probably has lunch ready. Think you’re up for some?”
“What are you not telling me?”
“What makes you think I’m withholding anything?”
“Because I’ve known you since I was ten and a half months old.”
Ellery blinked several times, slow, then faster, and then put a hand to her right eye. “Oh, shit. My contact lens slipped into the corner of my eye.” She turned herself off the bedside before Gail could grab her. “Better fix it! Be right back.” She hurried into the bathroom and closed the door.
Gail turned to Agatha, who didn’t bother peeling her stare away from the television screen.
“Why are you being so tight-lipped? That’s not like you.”
“I’m not. I simply know that sometimes, some words are received differently depending on whom delivers them. Are you ready for lunch?”
Ugh, she didn’t want to eat. She wanted to hide. Those piteous looks were going to send her fleeing up the stairs and covering her head with her pillow. It was inevitable.
“You’ve got to eat. You haven’t had anything in a day. I could give you a little boost, but it’d only be a short-term fix.”
Gail sighed. “I’ll eat.” As quickly as possible, and then she’d return to the room.
She undid her messy ponytail and redid it as she descended the stairs with Agatha on her heels. The voices coming from the kitchen were subdued, but cheerful enough. She couldn’t tell how many there were—how many bodies would be in there waiting to see her.
Judge her.
She paused at the bottom of the stairs with her hand resting on the banister. She just needed a moment to brace herself, but Agatha pushed her along.
“Go on. If you can’t fall apart in front of these people, then you’re not meant to be with them.”
Gail started walking again. “That doesn’t make it any easier.”
Marion, who was leaning against the deck door in full view of the staircase, saw her first. “Hey! Sorry, the rolls are all gone. I tried to stop them, but they’re—” She clamped her lips and cut an angry gaze across the room.
Gail stepped farther into the kitchen and saw it was directed at Charles. He gave his wife an innocent stare in return. “We’re what, sweetheart?”
“Ill-manned, boorish chow-hounds. You all come over here and act like you don’t get fed at home!”
“I’m a big man. I eat a lot.”
“Yeah, ditto,” John said from his usual place near the coffee maker. It was hard to believe he’d only been drinking the stuff for three years, his addiction was so strong.
Claude stood from the table and shifted Ruby to his hip. Heavy bags hung beneath his eyes, and his irises had that in-betweeny purple tint. He stopped six inches from her. Close enough to show he not only hadn’t slept, but also hadn’t shaved.
She reached up, involuntarily it seemed, and fixed a couple of the tousled curls at his temples.
“Hey, chéri.”
“You need a shave.”
“I know, right?” Marion said. “I hate it when they grow facial hair. I’m not a fan of the lumberjack look.”
He leaned in close so his lips were at Gail’s ear and whispered, “You keep me all night worrying about you, and your utmost concern is my grooming?”
She cringed. Suspecting the cause of his exhaustion was one thing, but being told in no uncertain terms was another. “Am I not allowed a preference?” she whispered back.
“I’ll go shave now if you want.”
She gave her head a slight shake. “It’s not that big of a deal, Claude.”
“I’ll shave anyway.”
He moved away, but didn’t go too far. His father was standing in the archway between the kitchen and living room, taking up a hell of a lot of space, and looking beautifully intimidating.
Great. She scanned the room with purpose now. One, two, three, four incubi. Jason was gone, at least.
She waited for that surge of lust to come, ready to battle it back with the indignation that’d filled her belly over the past day, but it never came.
She felt nothing for any of them, except one, but it wasn’t the steamroller kind of lust she’d felt days ago. It was the lust of mutual attraction and affection. It was a that can wait until later kind of arousal—the kind that most healthy adults felt for their partners.
What had happened to change that? She wasn’t complaining, exactly, but she was quickly learning that things in the magic world didn’t just fix themselves.
“Crowded in here,” she said to no one in particular.
“That’s par for the course when your entire extended family lives within walking distance,” Clarissa said from the stove. “Hey. I made enchiladas.”
All of the men, save Gulielmus, started moving toward the stove at once, but Clarissa flicked a dish towel at them. They backed up.
Clarissa rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Damn, that wasn’t an invitation. It was a mere statement of fact. There’s enough to go around. There always is.”
John guffawed. “That’s what you said last time, and I ended up with the burned corner of the casserole.”
“Keep on. I’ve got a chicken coop that needs tightening up and a tool belt with your name on it. Those chickens are still mad that you let the dog in last time, and I’m sure they’d love to make it up to you.”
John visibly bristled at the threat, and his upper lip curled. “Shit. Sorry.”
A creaking from the doorway drew Gail’s gaze to the right, where she found Gulielmus now leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. He looked at Clarissa with some mix of awe and amusement.
Clarissa held out a plate. “This one’s yours, Gail. Don’t thank me. I’m only serving you first because you promised me a marble cake. I took the butter out and it’s fixin’ to melt all over my counter.”
Gail’s grin went a bit wider and she reached for the plate. “You didn’t even know when I’d be up.”
“But I knew you would be up. You kids always get up eventually.”
“Thanks,” Gail whispered, and it took every ounce of restraint she had not to let the tears burning behind her eyes see the light of day.
Clarissa winked and turned back to the stove. “Oh! By the way, your grandma called. Bright ray of sunshine, that one is. She offered to pray for me. That was fun, swapping scripture with her.” She wriggled her eyebrows. “I think I won.”
“My grandmother?”
“Ugh.” Ellery joined them in the kitchen. She glanced at Gail’s plate and pulled open the utensil drawer. “She star-sixty-nined my ass. I should have blocked the number before I called out, but in my own defense, I didn’t know she was aware of that particular phone feature. It’s only, what, twenty years old?”
“Why did she call back?” Gail settled into the chair Claude pulled out for her.
Ellery held out a plate that she seemed to have acquired out of thin air and Clarissa scooped an enchilada onto it. “I only called her because someone who works with me at the hospital had let it slip that I hadn’t been in for a couple of days. She kept calling my cell and leaving those you-must-be-in-a-ditch messages. I assured her I was fine and just took a couple of days to shake off a bug I’d picked up, but I guess she didn’t believe me.”
“Clarissa, what did you tell her when she asked you who you were? I’m assuming she did.”
“Oh, she did.” Clarissa handed a plate to Marion. “I told her I was a good Southern witch’s worst nightmare and that I’d send her girls home to her knowing how to do a few new parlor tricks. Hee hee.”
Ellery reached over and pushed up Gail’s jaw that had dropped. “You didn’t.”
“She did,” Agatha said. She sat down with a plate of her own. Gail had never seen her eat. Maybe she was like Mark and had just made it a habit. She unfurled a cloth napkin onto her lap and picked up her fork. “And then I took the phone.”
“Oh shit.”
Agatha scoffed and tucked into her enchilada. “I asked to speak to your grandfather and the woman dared to start a game of twenty questions with me. I humored her. Not sure she believed me, but I imagine she’s wound up tighter than a brand-new yo-yo right now. Never did get to speak to him. Maybe I’ll just go visit. I bet Sunday dinner is interesting in that house. Must taste like butter and judgment.”
“Take me with you,” Ellery pleaded. “This, I’ve got to see.”
Agatha gave a nod that could only be interpreted as of course.
Another plate appeared on the table to Gail’s left, and Claude pulled out the seat beside her.
She was already half done, so she took Ruby from him and settled her onto her lap. Ruby reached immediately for what was left on her plate.
“Nope. You can’t eat that. You’re not built for jalapeños yet, baby.”
“She’d try to eat the plate itself if you’d let her,” Claude said.
“They’re so much work, kids. I bet Marion and Charles never get a moment’s peace from the anxiety. So much could happen to them when you turn your back.”
Claude shrugged. “It gets easier and harder as they get older. There are always new challenges. I think that makes it interesting. You’re learning as they do.”
“They don’t scare you? ’Cause they scare me. A few minutes at a time is okay, but to be the main caretaker? That’s intimidating. There are so many things you could screw up, and maybe they’ll never bounce back from it.”
“Most are pretty resilient, and some thrive in spite of what hardships they come up with,” Clarissa said. She cut a nasty glower over to Gulielmus, who backed out of the room with a sigh. “And the truth is, most will forgive you for the missteps even if your rationale for them doesn’t hold water.”
The words might have been directed to Gail, but she could have been talking to anyone in the room. Marion, who’d been tucked away in foster care for seventeen years because being with her parents might have been a death sentence for all of them. Gail and Ellery, who grew up being told to hide their lights under bushels, only to learn later they were capable of so much more than they’d ever dreamed. Charles and John and Claude, who’d endured abuse in the name of power, and were expected to toe some invisible line that kept moving. They were forced into service as monsters—things that they feared their own selves. Yet here they all sat near people they should have been railing against. But they didn’t, because part of trying to be human was recognizing that sometimes people behave the way they do because they believe they don’t have choices. Or perhaps the choices available would take them out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“Da,” Ruby said. She pointed and grinned and Charles, who managed to smile in return.
Claude’s squeeze of Gail’s knee drew her attention away from the somberness in the room, and she was thankful for it. He leaned in and whispered, “I need to ask you to do something that won’t be comfortable for you.”
“Something else, you mean?”
“It’s concerning Ross and Shaun.”
The enchilada half she’d eaten suddenly felt like a cannonball in her belly, and heavy as it was, it wanted to come back up. She swallowed several times, and pushed her plate back.
“I don’t know how I can help with that. I just want to stay away from him.”
“And I want you to stay away from him. I don’t want you anywhere near him ever again. But you have something he wants, and we can use that against him.”
“I don’t know if I can …”
“I won’t be far. I won’t let him hurt you again.”
“Do you promise?” She put her hand atop his and squeezed it. Tell me the truth.
“I promise. I’ll kill him myself if he tries.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gail couldn’t stop shaking. It’d started with her hands during the drive in Durham and jumped to her feet. By the time she got out of the car at the location where they’d agreed to meet the wolves, her whole body vibrated.
Claude led her around the corner of the squat, nondescript office building and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s okay, chéri. It’ll be quick, and we’ll never take our eyes off you.”
She squeezed the medallion Gulielmus had given her that morning in her palm and concentrated on its smooth, cold roundness. He’d said as long as she had it on her person, no one could grab her and teleport her elsewhere. She had one mind to put it in her shoe or in her back pocket, but she wanted to feel it and know she was in control of at least one thing.
“I’m scared,” she said.
When was the last time she’d said those words out loud? Maybe she never had. Admitting fear was both freeing and demoralizing. She wasn’t the right woman for this gig. Ellery would have been better at it. She was much better under pressure and the dirtier fighter of the two of them. She m
ight have been little, but she was scrappy.
But Ellery wasn’t the one who’d married the asshole. That was all on Gail.
“I know. I also know you can do this. Draw on my strength. Pull what you need to be confident, or even just to pretend.”
She pressed her forehead against his chest. “There’s no magic for that.”
“Yeah, there is. It’s called love. What’s stronger than that?”
Did he say love? She pulled back a bit and looked into his eyes.
“I love you,” he said.
“Me?”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I …” Belief wasn’t really the issue. She was absolutely sure he was capable of love. He certainly loved his siblings and his niece. He even loved Clarissa and all the rest of the folks at Mortonville in a different kind of way. He even loved people he didn’t know—all those spirits asking favors of him. He wouldn’t do it unless he felt something for those lost souls. But those were the sorts of relationships any decent person would have. He didn’t have to work so hard for those.
Him loving her, though—that was different.
“Why?”
His forehead creased with his confusion. “Why do I love you? Is that what you’re asking me?”
“Yes. Do you just love me because you think you’re supposed to? Because of our history, I mean.”
He muttered fast and low in French and gestured wildly. “Are you kidding me?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got more issues than Time magazine.”
Her grabbed her shoulders and growled. “For fuck’s sake, Gail Colvard. I love you because you’re a beautiful woman with a big heart who is so selfless that she doesn’t even realize she’s been taking care of everyone else at the expense of herself. How dare you tell me I don’t love you for who you are? And how dare you think you’re not capable of being a good mother?”
She opened her mouth to say something—what, she didn’t really know—but he didn’t give her the chance to speak. He pulled at the back of her head and held her in place as he brought his lips down to hers.
All she could do was blink, being so stunned by his passion, and then she realized this gorgeous, forgiving man was kissing her because he wanted to. He wanted her.