Initiation

by Paula Millhouse

  It wasn’t like our first kiss. Nor was it like the second one he’d stolen. My God, this was something life-altering, and it scared the hell out of me.

  His raspy pink tongue skimmed across my lips, and teased my mouth open, dipping and swirling inside. He pulled me closer, explored my mouth, and cupped my breast with his hand.

  I pressed my chest closer to his touch.

  Tension built where our bodies met. It was something so much more though, as if his soul was drawing on mine. He was my best friend, and yet, his need to possess me was there in this third kiss. And by the gods, some part of me wanted him to claim me.

  Shit. Our timing couldn’t possibly be any worse. We need to focus on the abductions. . . .

  I acknowledged what his fierce kiss demanded. He wanted me, in the worst way, and damn my body, it betrayed me, and asked him for more. Warm, wet heat pooled between my legs. If the driver hadn’t been a nebulous threat, I’d have wrapped my legs around Max’s waist, and demanded he take me right there, in the car.

  God, I couldn’t let this happen, could I?

  Max was my best friend, my sidekick. Didn’t I have some moral obligation to teach him how to be the best HWB agent he could be? I had no business losing myself in his arms. Wanting him to take me like this . . . ? His rapid shallow breaths drove me to distraction.

  But, somewhere in the back of my mind, Max was proof of my mantra. Men always leave.

  He would leave to join the ranks of the HWB, just as soon as we found our mothers. This would all be a dream. A fantasy. An erotic fantasy, sure, and one I could take if I wanted it.

  And damn it all, I wanted it, even if it was only temporary.

  He was sure damn ready, from the look of the bulge between his legs. And truth be told, I wanted to find out what he had hidden under those black denim Levi’s. It was pretty obviously spectacular.

  I’d lost my damn mind. I was in way too far, and way too deep. How could I focus on work when this conflict between me and Max was closing in and growing larger?

  He placed his lips on my neck, and worked them up toward my ear. I pressed my hands against his broad chest. He moaned with my touch, the sound explicit pleasure. I curled my fingers possessively in his shirt, and drew his lips back to mine.

  He didn’t hold anything back.

  He kissed me with primitive, fierce passion, demanding more. This river was becoming an ocean, and it swept me away. I gotta admit, I was ready to plunge in, to lose myself to him, but the HWB vehicle slowed.

  The jostling and sudden stop jolted me back into reality.

  I pulled back from Max. He sought my eyes with his, sucking in breaths, trying to compose himself.

  “I have to face Shade. We have to find our mothers.” We couldn’t be playing the horizontal mambo while the world waited for us. I jerked back away from Max, and the driver opened the window that separated us. “Your destination awaits, Miss Silverton. Shade will meet you inside.”

  I lurched for the door handle, and fell out of the SUV onto unsteady legs. I jerked my jacket down in place and heard the sound of Max’s opposite door closing, registering our hasty separation.

  Before I found my footing, before the effects of his lingering kiss dissipated, he was at my side, cupping my elbow in his hand, guiding me forward to my mother’s farmhouse. “Are you ready for this?” he asked.

  “I am.” I nodded sharply.

  Cyn and Shade stepped out of the forward vehicle, and turned to stare at us. I looked up at Max. “Is it my imagination, or are they standing a little too close to each other?” Had Shade wiped her mind?

  “Are you jealous?” Max asked.

  “Uh, no . . . just a little worried for my sister.” What had they discussed on the drive over? I clutched Max’s forearm. “Are they talking about us?”

  Did they know? Was it obvious I’d lost myself in Max’s kiss? Could he smell desire on me? They turned, and the sound of their boots crunching on the long, oyster-shell driveway leading to Mom’s house broke my reverie.

  “Maybe Cyn knows more about Rosencratz than she’s letting on. I wouldn’t put it past Shade to lure her in, and use her for information.” Max urged me forward with the touch of his hand. “We’ll talk about that kiss later. Maybe explore what the next one does to our future. But for now, let’s go see what we can find out about our mothers, shall we?”

  Chapter 15

  Sam

  I STARED AT MY childhood home, and a wave of nostalgia hit me. The bright white clapboards on the farmhouse practically glittered in the sunshine, and the contrasting black shutters welcomed us. Free-range chickens strutted about the expansive yard, pecking through multicolored leaves for grubs and bugs.

  Our American flag fluttered in the salty sea breeze, and although the scene was idyllic, I clenched my fists because Mom wasn’t here. Her aura was missing from the property, just like in my nightmare, and everything about this felt wrong.

  Max reached over and unclenched my fist with his hand, lacing his fingers through mine. “We’ll find them, Sam.”

  I tried to keep the dread bubbling up through my belly under control, but if the same men who’d held Cyn prisoner had taken Mom and Miss Daisy, they were in real danger.

  Max seemed anxious too. “I want to search the property for my mother,” he said. “Maybe talk to some of the farm animals and see what they know.”

  “Maybe she’s the link to finding my mom. Miss Daisy knew her better than anyone, considering she’d been Mom’s familiar for thirty-some years.”

  Cyn and Shade walked close to each other, whispering conspiratorially. She showed him Mom’s vegetable garden, and gave him a brief tour of the grounds. I frowned. Those two pairing up might be a very bad idea. Max frowned too, as he led me up the winding sugar-maple-lined drive.

  Things had gotten really weird, really fast, and I couldn’t blame him. He must be worried about Miss Daisy. After everything we’d suffered in the last forty-eight hours, I wanted my mom too. “Why don’t you go on ahead and look for her? Maybe she’s still here. If not, maybe you can find a clue Cyn missed.”

  “You’ll be okay without me?”

  I nodded.

  He grasped my hands tight. “Whatever you find, don’t leave Shade’s side until I get back, okay? At least with him around, I know you’re both safe.”

  I didn’t know what I could promise him, but I nodded again. It was the only way he’d go check out the property without me. “You go. See what you can find.”

  He pulled away, shifted into his cat, and then bounded away into the grasses at the edge of the farm. I took in a deep breath, walked up the five wide wooden stairs to the house, and swung open the screen door.

  Once inside, Cyn waved me over to Mom’s antique desk in the front room. While the house was a real working farmhouse, Mom had converted everything to wireless as soon as the technology was available. My sister fired up our mother’s computer, and Shade went to work analyzing data.

  I treated myself to a walk down memory lane. The farmhouse was large, with two stories, and decorated in a seaside motif. Starfish and sand dollars graced the whitewashed mantel above the working fireplace. Three overstuffed sofas beckoned travelers to sit and discuss the day.

  Across the dining room, which was graced with a white wicker and glass table, and cushioned chairs, the Atlantic Ocean beckoned through three sets of white French doors.

  The kitchen was open to the entire farmhouse, with cheerful copper pots and pans waiting to cook family meals where love lived. What I wouldn’t give for a bowl of Mom’s homemade chicken noodle soup right now.

  The ache for my mom lodged in my gravelly dry throat. God, I loved this house. I was swept away with how much I’d missed living here these past several years.

  Cyn busied herself with filling a kettle with water,
then firing up a gas flame burner on the old country stove. “I’m making green tea with peaches and ginseng, so we can focus on finding Mom,” she said.

  “Tea would be good,” I said.

  I focused on Shade’s reconnaissance of Mom’s computer—her recent contacts, emails, websites she’d visited. It all painted a picture of Wilhelmina Silverton’s footprint on the web.

  Shade hooked his satellite phone to her network so the Geek Squad at HWB headquarters could search the computer remotely, and maybe find a clue as to her current location. He pointed to the screen. “This is a log of Helmina’s phone records. Looks like the last time she used her cell was yesterday. 7:08 p.m.,” he said.

  “Who did she call?” I asked, peering over his massive shoulder at the scrolling data rendered by his long vampire fingers. I recognized the exchange, and my heart thundered in my chest. “That’s Manhattan.”

  “Right you are. My boys are scouring the city as we speak. Tell me more about this convention of covens in Central Park at midnight on Halloween,” Shade said, turning to look in my eyes. “The festival of Samhain?”

  “It’s a special year because Samhain coincides with a full blue moon,” Cyn said, trying to catch Shade’s line of vision. “You know what that means, right?”

  He shrugged. “Enlighten me.”

  “The venue has been on the docket for years now, because it’s the second full moon of the month. Supposedly, a special kind of magic happens on a blue moon.”

  I gestured to Shade. “Blue moons are sacred. The ocean exerts a special pull on the Earth when the moon’s full, you know. A second one in a month is a pretty big deal.”

  “Covens are traveling from all over the world to meet up in Central Park, get to know each other, and celebrate the change of seasons. New York has never seen anything like it,” Cyn added.

  My sister was right. Did everyone understand its significance? “Mom told me she’d talked to a couple of women who were having financial problems that would prevent them from attending. The funds earmarked for their participation in the festival were diverted to recover their familiars,” I said, biting my lower lip.

  Shade frowned. “Familiars?”

  “Yeah, you know, creatures like Max. Keep up, Shade.”

  “But you’re not a witch . . .”

  “True, I’m not a witch, but I come from a family of witches. Mom wanted me to have my own familiar. There’s no rule book that says familiars are restricted to witches, you know.”

  “It’s the way it’s been done since the beginning of time.” Cyn turned the burner off, and poured boiling water into a teapot. I swear she rolled her eyes. “My sister thinks she gets a special pass, even though she rejected becoming a practicing witch.”

  “Easy, you two,” Shade interrupted us. “I get the idea of the shapeshifters. Helmina and Miss Daisy have been sending us recruits like Max for over a decade now. But they’ve all been like him. Cats. Not other species. You’re telling me any animal can be a familiar?”

  Cyn shrugged. “Witches don’t typically get to choose their familiars. We each have a certain affinity for different species, and I believe our familiars are drawn to us by our own version of magic. Sam’s a cat person. I love dogs. But familiars come in every shape and size. You’re acquainted with celebrities who carry their pets around in designer purses, right?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’ve been known to surf the web. Are you saying they’re all shapeshifters?” Shade queried, and typed in a few words for his guys at headquarters.

  “No, not all of them,” Cyn said, and brought us each a mug of strong tea, sweet honey optional. “Some are pets, but most are more magically inclined. My Sebastian is a dog, but he’s still young yet. He’s really just a puppy, so we don’t know if he’ll manifest any powers, but I’m counting on it.” My sister smiled at Shade. “Maybe if you were a witch, you’d have a vampire bat as your familiar.”

  He raised his brows, and poured extra-thick, sweet honey into his mug.

  All this talk about familiars had me missing Max terribly. I looked around the cozy farmhouse room, but Max was nowhere to be seen.

  Could Cyn have been wrong about Miss Daisy? Maybe Max had found her hiding out there. Were he and Miss Daisy out frolicking around the grounds? Still, I tried to focus on the matter at hand. “What’s the link with the monks? Were they from Manhattan, too?”

  “As far as the guys at HQ can tell, they were all from the northeast. It would have been nice to question them,” Shade said, rolling his eyes, his voice impertinent.

  He could try that condescension crap with me all day long, but I knew better than to let him intimidate me. By now, he and his guys from the Hunters’ Watch Brigade think tank would know everything anyone could possibly know about those fiends, alive or dead. I ignored his insinuation that I had interfered in the case, and sipped my tea.

  My sister raised a finger. “Rosencratz joined a local convent back in the eighties after the newspapers got wind of the children she abducted.” Cyn didn’t meet my eyes.

  What did she know about that anyway? Wait the hell a minute. Had she had something to do with my kidnapping? I fisted my hands and confronted my sister.

  “Tell me what you know about Rosencratz and her activities in the early eighties.” There. The cat was out of the proverbial bag. If she didn’t have anything to do with the abduction, she had an out. Surely my sister hadn’t helped Rosencratz . . . had she?

  Cyn couldn’t meet my gaze.

  I gripped my mug a little too tight.

  Shade stopped his incessant tapping at the keyboard, then turned the swivel chair he sat on, and stared at her. “Why don’t you answer your sister, Cyn?”

  Everyone froze.

  I fought for a breath. Her omission implicated her, and while I didn’t want to believe it, I had a distinct feeling I was about to learn one of my greatest fears was true.

  “You gonna tell her, or should I?” Shade asked.

  Cyn’s brown eyes flashed toward me, but before I could register any sort of confession on her part, her eyes darted away, up and to the right, as if she was searching for something to say, something to hide her lies.

  “You helped her abduct me?”

  So much for comforting family time at home. With Mom missing, all the old anger I held inside me resurfaced. The bitterness I’d harbored against my older sister hurt, like brittle shells chafing on sand at a storm’s high tide.

  Knowing my sister had hated me that much fractured my barely composed veneer. “You sold me out when I was three years old? For Christ’s sake, Cyn, what kind of monster are you, anyway?”

  She held up a hand. “You have no idea what it was like for me back then. I’ll regret my decision until the day I die, but I had no choice, Sam.”

  “No choice? What the hell does that mean?” Red rage flowed up into my face, burning my ears. Pure fury whipped around in my head. More than that, I felt sad. Sad that she’d betrayed me, and sold me out to a fiend like Rosencratz.

  Nothing but time and distance had softened this for me. Now, being back here, facing her like this without my mother to defend me, ripped wide a wound I’d never wanted opened again. All I wanted to do was run away. “Never mind. I can’t do this with you.”

  “Wait! I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t understand what she was going to do. Rosencratz cornered me. She threatened me, Sam. She said if I turned you over to her, she’d spare Mom. She was going to kill her. You don’t remember, but they were at each other’s throats back then.” Cyn wiped her hand over her eyes, her expression torn. “Christ, I’m sorry. I was only seven years old!”

  “And not my champion.” Weren’t big sisters supposed to protect their younger siblings? I glanced around the farmhouse, wishing the warmth of the cozy home could help us close this awful gap between us.

 
“I took you to her to save Mom’s life.”

  At seven years old, she couldn’t have understood what she was doing, I realized.

  “By the time I was old enough to understand what I’d done, I felt so guilty, I couldn’t face you, couldn’t tell you the truth. If I could change things, I would,” Cyn said. “That’s why I called you yesterday. That’s why I sent your vampire the files I collected on Francesca all these years. To protect you from her now.”

  Could I trust her?

  But wait. “That’s what Rosencratz wanted all along, right? She meant to separate us, to divide us.” At least now that Cyn had come clean, we might have a chance to get past this. “She used you to hurt us.”

  Cyn’s confession struck a new chord in my heart. I glanced at Shade. He was a pretty smart guy. After all, he’d been around us humans for over two hundred years. Forcing Cyn to ’fess up to her deepest, darkest secret just might lead both of us into the light.

  What else did the vampire know?

  I heaved in a heavy sigh, shook my head, and decided from here on out my sister and I were gonna find a new argument. “Fine. So she totally trashed our family by manipulating you too.”

  “What?” Cyn said. She dragged her gaze to mine.

  “I’m not saying I would have played it the same way, but damn, Cyn, why should we let Rosencratz separate us anymore?”

  “Really?” Her brown eyes bulged wide. “If you’re willing to find a way through this, then I am too.” Her incredulous expression inspired me. “You’ll forgive me?”

  “I’m kind of sick of it. Aren’t you? Sick of hiding from each other? Sick of fighting? Because of her?”

  Cyn dropped her head. “Yes. I miss you. All this guilt has separated us for way too long.”

  I strode over to my sister and grabbed her hands. She raised her head and looked at me. It was as if that act made us actually look at each other, really see each other for the first time. And my sister was beautiful. “I want us to get past this. Fuck Rosencratz and her manipulation.”