by Nadine Mutas
Lily half turned around in her seat. “I’ll keep searching, maybe there’s another way. I’ll also keep my eyes open for how to track the origin of spells, all right?”
Lily’s words barely registered through the despair engulfing Merle. She swallowed hard, past a throat gone dry, scraped with sandpaper. Shaking her head, she whispered, “It was all for nothing.” The world around her lost color, just as everything seemed to lose sense. “We’ll never find her.” She felt the bond to Maeve, still barely there, and she saw how it would snap, all too soon, irrevocably tearing out a piece of Merle’s soul.
Suddenly, there was no air left in the car. Her breathing hitched, her chest becoming as if bound by tight ropes. Sweat beaded on her skin.
Rhun’s hand pressed down on her chest, rubbed in slow, measured strokes, forcing her to inhale when she wanted to choke.
“Breathe,” he muttered into her ear.
Lily’s gaze flicked from Rhun to Merle and back again, and she gave the slightest of nods to the demon. Her eyes then narrowed on her best friend with affectionate relentlessness. “We will get Maeve back,” she said, holding Merle’s eyes captive, not allowing her to break down. “Don’t you give up now, Merle MacKenna.”
Lily’s faith, her stubborn loyalty, combined with Rhun’s calm presence beside her, his heat seeping into her skin, his power enfolding her, it brought Merle back from the brink of despair.
“We will find her,” Lily repeated.
Merle sucked in a breath, nodded, and bent forward when Rhun’s hand slid to her back, pushed against her with a gentle command. He stroked along her spine as she rested her head on her knees and calmed her breathing.
“That’s it, little witch.” The murmur was low, intimate, meant for her alone.
When her pulse wasn’t on the verge of going through the roof anymore, Merle straightened up again with a deep breath, and Rhun’s hand followed her movements up until it curved around the back of her neck.
“I’m all right,” Merle said in response to Lily’s concerned look. “I’m fine.” She leaned back and relaxed into Rhun’s fingers caressing her neck. “It’s just…”
Maeve’s image flashed before her eyes, quiet, shy Maeve—who had fought with Merle for her right to move out of the house with surprising persistence. Her little sister had never demanded anything for herself, but in this, she’d been adamant, arguing with Merle to the point of yelling—which had been so unlike Maeve, it had shocked Merle for days. In the end, Merle had relented. If only she’d kept Maeve by her side, though, she might still be unharmed…
“I should have never let her move out,” Merle muttered. “I still don’t know why she wanted it so badly—it’s like she couldn’t wait to get away from me.” And how much that had hurt her, still hurt, she’d never told her sister. Just like she’d never told her how much Maeve meant to her, how much she’d wanted her to move back in. The old Victorian had been so empty without her quiet presence.
“It’s not easy,” Basil said, his voice low and bearing a note of painful understanding, “being the child without magic in a witch family.”
Merle stopped short and stared at him. “She never said anything—”
“Not to you.” The lights of the oncoming cars gleamed in the dark blond of his hair until it shone like spun gold. “We used to talk about it, sometimes. She felt out of place, not really belonging. See, she knew about this world beyond that of ordinary people, knew all this stuff about magic and what it can do, but she was never part of it. When you’d meet with Lily and your witch friends, she stayed on the outside, couldn’t share it with you, even though she was born of a line of witches same as you. I’m guessing she was trying to build her own identity, start her own life on her own terms, and for that she needed space from you.”
Merle was dumbstruck. She’d never looked at it that way, had never understood where Maeve was coming from. “Damn, I’ve been blind.” She shook her head, seeing the pieces falling into place. All the little signs in Maeve’s behavior, all the hints she’d given over the years, and Merle had been too focused on herself to notice. As she thought, for the first time, about what it must have been like—really been like—for Maeve growing up without magic in a witch household, she realized something else. Her gaze snapped back to Basil. “What about you? How are y—”
“Don’t worry about me, sweetie.” He met her eyes through the rearview mirror. “I made my peace with it a long time ago. And besides, being a male without magic in a witch family is the rule rather than the exception, so it wasn’t as much of a problem to begin with.”
She gave him a small smile. “Right. Plus, you’ve been spoiled silly by all the women in your household.”
Basil laughed, even as Lily piped up.
“Not by me,” she said, giving her brother a good-natured smack on the shoulder.
Merle shook her head, squeezing Basil’s arm. “Thanks for the insight, though. I never knew Maeve felt like that.” Rubbing her forehead, she closed her eyes for a second—and then groaned.
Rhun had slid his hand up to the back of her head and now massaged her skull the way he knew would make her toes curl. And they did, dammit.
“Rhun!” It was supposed to be a rebuke, but it came out as a moan since she’d melted inside.
He gave her wicked grin. “You looked like you needed a massage. Just trying to help out here.”
She swatted at his hand until he withdrew it to play with her hair instead.
Throwing a sheepish glance at Lily and Basil, Merle mumbled, “He didn’t… He just… He does this thing with his fingers…”
Basil winced, and Lily swiveled around to stare at the road, her hands over her ears. “TMI! TMI!”
“No, not like that!” Merle could have sworn someone had turned up the heat in the car. “That’s not what I—Oh, somebody just kill me now…”
“No can do, witch volcano,” Rhun muttered, his chuckle resounding within her. “I’ve got plans for you.”
“So,” Basil said loudly, clearing his throat, “where do you want me to drop you off, Merle? I think it’s best if we don’t know where you’ve set up camp, so I figured I’ll let you out some place public and you go from there. All right?”
“Yeah,” Merle said, infinitely grateful for Basil’s tactful ignorance, “that’s fine. Thanks.”
Glancing out the window, she realized they’d reached downtown. From what she remembered, Bahram’s apartment was just a few blocks away from their current position. Rhun gave her a nod.
“You can let us out here,” she said to Basil.
“Sure.”
He drove into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant and turned off the engine. They all got out of the car, and then Lily hurried around to retrieve something from the trunk. Reappearing with a small duffel bag, she handed it to Merle.
“I thought you might appreciate a change of clothes,” she said with a smile.
Merle moaned at the thought of fresh laundry. “You’re an angel in disguise.”
Lily waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know. So,” she said, her gaze flicking back and forth between Merle and Rhun, “I’ll keep raiding our library and whatever other sources I can find for more information, and I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I stumble upon something. And you…” Here she poked a finger in Merle’s chest and lowered her voice so only Merle would hear her. “…you call me if that luscious hunk of demon gives you any kind of trouble you need help with, all right?”
“I can hear you just fine, you know,” Rhun said casually. “And by the way, thank you—I do so appreciate female admiration.”
Lily froze, then slowly straightened up and—without turning around—gave Rhun the finger over her shoulder.
“Thanks, but no, thanks,” he said. “I’ve already got a lovely witch to do that with, and I’m a one-witch kind of demon.”
And that was the moment Merle decided she would eviscerate Rhun after beating him
to a pulp.
Chapter 17
Rhun’s first clue to Merle being more than royally pissed at him was the fact she made him magically walk into a door. Twice.
Except for their first meeting, and that one time in the cemetery, when she’d made him trip—which had been playful teasing—she’d never harmfully used her powers on him, not even when he’d pushed her out of her comfort zone and tried to irritate the hell out of her.
Now, however, for some unfathomable reason, she’d lashed out at him with her magic two times in a row. And—fucking hell—his nose hurt like a bitch after clashing twice with the front door of the bar they’d entered in search for someone he could take pain from. The irony of that particular thought wasn’t lost on him as he rubbed the bridge of his nose and set it straight again with a crack, grimacing just a little at the sharp jolt of pain. Wiping the blood off with the back of his hand, he turned around to stare at Merle.
“The fuck did you do that for?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her face was all innocence, good enough to fool a poker champion.
If he hadn’t felt her magic, couldn’t still taste it in the air, he might have actually believed her. Tricky little witch.
“That was totally uncalled for,” he whined. “I’ve been on my best behavior, and this is how you reward me? What did I do to deserve this?”
“Don’t you have a drug dealer or pimp to torture?”
He paused for a moment, trying to read her aura. She had it tightly under control, not even showing the slightest hint of any emotion. No anger, no exasperation, no humor either. Something was wrong, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. She’d been much more open with him before, to the point of revealing a vulnerability that had pulled at his heartstrings, so why was she now shuttered like a storefront in preparation for a hurricane?
“Are you gonna be all right alone here for a few minutes?” He didn’t much like leaving her standing in the corner while he went hunting through the crowd, but the thought of her coming along and witnessing him taking pain from another scumbag was even less appealing.
“I can handle myself.” Her tone turned the air icy.
The stare she directed toward him then wasn’t the usual Merle glare—it was the kind of dark scowl one might see on the face of a female who was silently plotting to kill her ex. That’s how Merle was looking at him right now, as if thinking up fun ways to hurt him. Like, maybe, eviscerating him after beating him to a pulp.
With that uncomfortable thought at the forefront of his mind, he went about his hunt through the bar, a dark, grimy shithole he knew from his time before the Shadows. It had stubbornly withstood the withering of decades and the gentrification of the neighborhood, and still served as the watering hole for all sorts of lowlifes.
It didn’t take him long to pick up on the twisted aura of one particularly vile character, a drug dealer who had just covertly sold a bag of pills to a twitchy kid. Rhun waited in a corner until the kid, who could be no older than sixteen, left, and the drug dealing scum made for the restroom. With one last glance in the direction of Merle, to see if she was doing okay—she was, still standing alone and unbothered—Rhun followed the man.
He made short work of him in the empty restroom. After silencing the guy’s vocal cords with one mental crush, Rhun dragged the struggling figure into one of the dingy stalls, and then used some more of his demon powers to sever the sinews in the scum-sucker’s body, one by one.
Pain erupted in the man’s aura, oozed from his pores. Rhun absorbed it, devoured it, sighing with delight as it nurtured him. Nothing better than causing some raw hurt to make his night, to take his mind off a witch he couldn’t have.
Against better judgment, driven by his hunger, Rhun sank his throbbing fangs into the man’s neck. The blood tasted revolting, pumped full of narcotics, and Rhun stopped drinking after two pulls, spitting the foul stuff on the floor.
“Fucking junkies,” he muttered under his breath, and concentrated on causing some more pain instead.
When he was done, the man’s limbs were only held together by flesh and bone, all the sinews being torn apart, so when Rhun let him go, the drug dealer slumped to the dank floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He’d be unable to even crook his little finger, much less stand up and run away until someone found him here.
Rhun regarded him for a moment with a dispassionate eye. He’d have liked to make the internal organs of the scumbag pop like overheated corn in the microwave, but that would have effectively killed him in no time. Wouldn’t be a loss, in Rhun’s opinion, and he’d have done it without a second’s hesitation not too long ago—but that was before he’d met his witch. Now, he contented himself with making the human chew up his own tongue as a parting gift, and then he strolled out of the restroom, whistling a tune.
He stopped when he saw Merle.
She leaned against the wall in the corner next to the entrance, her arms folded in front of her chest, every single sign of her body language clearly projecting a “Fuck off” vibe. Of course, though, that didn’t keep the bastards who frequented this joint from trying to come on to her.
What made Rhun stop in his tracks and admire the view, however, was what happened to those said bastards. One tripped and fell on his face before he reached Merle, another was seized by a nasty bout of coughing that made him run to the bar for a drink after he’d tried to chat her up. Another one who’d been approaching her with a leer walked straight past Merle and collided face-first with the opposite wall, and even another—who’d called her something that made Rhun want to smash the guy’s face in—had the sudden and irrational urge to douse himself not only with his own beer, but with that of his pals as well. Which led to a heated brawl between drinking buddies.
And all the while, Merle hadn’t even moved a finger, leaning against the wall with a casual don’t-mess-with-me attitude.
Standing there, staring at her, Rhun decided he’d never met a sexier female in his life.
He grinned with unconcealed endorsement and approached his witch, reaching out to stroke her cheek—and instead ended up involuntarily poking that finger in his nose. Of course, it still hurt like hell from when he’d force-smashed it into the door before.
“Done here?” Merle asked him, her voice flat, her eyes cold.
“Yes.” He glared at her, magic swirling between them. “Would you let me remove my finger?”
“I don’t have anything to do with where you decide to stick your fingers.” She pushed off the wall, picked up her duffel bag, and walked outside.
“What the fuck did I do?” he called after her, still not able to pull his finger out of his nose.
She didn’t answer him, and she didn’t loosen her magical hold on him until they’d reached the apartment, which meant he was forced to walk three blocks through downtown with one finger up his nose. The looks this earned him from passers-by spoke volumes.
“So what’s this all about?” he asked, closing the door to the apartment behind him. He gingerly pinched his nose, winced at the pain.
“You’re a jerk.” Merle dumped the duffel bag in the hallway and bent to rummage through it.
“I know, that’s nothing new.” Leaning against the wall with one shoulder, he watched her take out a set of fresh clothes. “Why don’t you just tell me which department I fucked up in this time, I apologize, you forgive me, and we move on to have hot make-up sex?”
“So you can flaunt that in front of my friends, too?” She stood and rounded on him with fire in her eyes.
Ah, so that’s what this is about. “I wasn’t flaunting,” he said, slightly piqued.
“Really? What were you doing, then? Trying to find out how to best embarrass me?” Her voice shook slightly, and there, in her aura, was the tiniest flicker of hurt. It felt like razors scraping over his skin.
He was about to reply something when Merle cut him off.
“You know what? Don’t bother. I don’t care.”
The tremor in her voice belied her statement. “I’m going to leaf through the grimoire again so we can get on with the search to find my sister, but first I’m taking a shower. Alone,” she added with a scathing look, and then stomped toward the bathroom.
Rhun was left staring at the wake of her aura, which flickered with the turmoil of emotions she hadn’t been able to shield from him anymore.
Anger, he could take—in fact, he liked her getting a bit riled so she would banter with him. It was a teasing game, irritating her just enough so she would shed her proper attitude and verbally tangle with him. But hurt—that was something else. He didn’t want to see that in her eyes, sense it in her aura.
For a reason he hadn’t reckoned with but had come to accept, he couldn’t stand the thought of her being disappointed in him. With not a little astonishment, he realized it threw his world out of kilter, made him want to hold her and soothe her until it was righted again.
Such an unsettling feeling, knowing one single person held the key to his own happiness.
He thought about the irrational urge which had driven him to crudely stake his claim on her in front of her friends. No, not her friends—just Basil. The way the other male had looked at her, touched her, held her, had made Rhun’s reason dissolve in a wash of visceral jealousy and possessiveness. He’d never been territorial about females, until Merle had snuck up on him and transformed him into a primitive beast staking claim on its mate.
Mate.
The word stung, just as it stung him that he’d never get to make her his with the most intimate, most serious bond his species was capable of. The thought of letting her go was a raw, gaping wound inside, though it didn’t ache as much as the mere idea of taking her powers and leaving her stripped of her identity.
Which was why, in the long hours he’d lain shackled in the dark basement, fearing for his witch, wanting to know she was unharmed, he’d changed his mind. Oh, he would let her go, all right. But not as he’d originally planned.
Going back to the Shadows, he thought, wouldn’t break him. He’d been there already, he’d survived. Betraying Merle, however, would kill something inside him.