Grim Haven (Devilborn Book 1)

by Jen Rasmussen

  Balls.

  “I killed a Wick, I was on the run,” he said. “I had a horrible fight with my father, and then I drove for seventeen straight hours. I was exhausted.”

  “Okay…”

  “You know, my kind, we have a weird relationship with vitality, and it shows itself in odd ways sometimes. When we get overtired, we can get a little loopy.”

  “So you’re saying you were drunk, basically.”

  “It’s not quite like that. Physically, we hold up great. Our reflexes are fine. Driving isn’t a problem. It just… lowers our inhibitions, sometimes.”

  “I see.” I cleared my throat. “Well. Glad we cleared that up. And thanks for the lecture on everything I’m doing wrong, too, that was really helpful. You can keep the donuts.”

  I started to turn away, but he said, “Verity. Wait.”

  “Yes?” I met his eyes. He could fix this so easily.

  I’m not sorry I kissed you. Not at all. All I’m sorry for is being such a jerk. What can I do to make it up to you? Name it, please.

  But of course he didn’t say any of that. What he actually said was, “Here’s the thing: sooner or later, you’re going to have to get involved. You can’t just opt out of the world, because the world will come and get you. If the last few days have taught you nothing else, they should have taught you that.”

  I’d had more than enough by then. What made him think he was so qualified to cast stones? I mimicked—one might even say mocked—his tone and his words. “Here’s the thing, Cooper: sooner or later, you’re going to have to take responsibility for yourself.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “First it was your clan’s fault that you’re always running away, that you never fight for yourself. Now it’s my fault. When do your choices become your own fault?”

  It wasn’t fair—I knew perfectly well he couldn’t stand alone against the Wicks—but I wasn’t terribly concerned with fair. My own nerves were so raw, I just wanted to hit one of his. See how he liked it, having everything he hated about himself laid bare.

  A low and cruel thing to do, and I saw immediately that I’d done it too well. I only watched for a second, as rage gathered in his face like a storm cloud. Then I turned and left, before he could say anything else. Or kick me out.

  I would have preferred to go back to bed and feel sorry for myself, but I didn’t have the luxury. After a round of status checks on the sick guests—no change, in most of their cases—I went for a walk to clear my head instead, being careful to stay within the boundaries of the property.

  Cooper Blackwood, I decided, was an idiot. It was his fault Cillian Wick had found Bristol. And now he wanted to yell at me for being too defensive? What else should I be? This was my hotel. My town.

  Not that I’d have thought of laying claim to either, a few weeks ago. But things had changed. I wasn’t alone in my apartment, with my quiet job and my books, hiding behind story spells in which I was the only character anymore. So I guessed in my way, I was engaging. I was connecting.

  I had become a part of something, and against all odds, that something was Bristol.

  Take that, Cooper.

  And now that I’d claimed this improbable inheritance, it was my responsibility. My job was to protect it, not to solve some handsome chef’s problems for him.

  A poor job I was making of it, at that. I sat on the grass, my back to Cordelia’s craggy trunk, and looked at the Mount Phearson, where most of Bristol’s sick now lay.

  I brought a new darkness here. And then I failed to defend you from it.

  Cooper was right about that much, at least: my strategy didn’t work. It wasn’t enough, being the hotel’s partner. I couldn’t be its equal.

  I needed to be its owner.

  Like Madeline Underwood before me. Nobody was ever afforded protection under her inn’s roof, but those she extended it to. Even Max, who had his own claim on the Phearson, was never safe there unless she allowed him to be. She may have used the power of a safe haven when it suited her—for herself, for my father—but she bent her home to her own will, too.

  My father.

  All of Bristol had been like an inn for him, offering him boundless protection. Nothing could harm him there.

  And it wasn’t only that nothing could harm him. Nothing could even find him. Nothing could get to him at all.

  Sanctuary.

  Maybe it wasn’t Miss Underwood I needed to model myself after, now. Maybe it was time to learn a few lessons from dear old dad.

  I was still sitting on the lawn, reflecting on this, when Phineas called with good news: he’d gotten Lydia home safely, and now, he thought, he might be on to a cure.

  “They didn’t design this to kill anybody,” Phineas said. “Just to weaken them for a while. Maybe to warn us?”

  “Partly,” I agreed. “And to make sure that if Cooper left the property, he’d be vulnerable to attack. He… has something they want. But I don’t know if they know where he’s keeping it. They might not have wanted to kill him. Only weaken him, like you said, so they could question him if need be.”

  “Well, that’s good news for us,” Phineas said. “I’m sure I can crack this. Just give me an hour, tops.”

  As soon as I hung up, I called Agatha, who I knew was keeping in touch with Andrea Foley. “Any word on Jake?” I asked.

  “He’s in bad shape, I’m afraid,” Agatha said. “On all kinds of fluids and stuff, but the doctors are flummoxed. And he’s so small…”

  “I might have something that will help,” I said. “Phineas, the guy you met yesterday? He’s working on a—”

  “You’re going to say potion, aren’t you?” Agatha interrupted with a sigh. She, more so than her husband, had been resigning herself to the reality of the supernatural ever since the attack. But that didn’t mean she liked it.

  “Call it a counter-curse, if you prefer.”

  “I’ll call it my new best friend, if it helps this poor kid.”

  “Well, Phineas says he might only need another hour.”

  “I hope Jake has that long.”

  And I hoped she was just being melodramatic. Kids didn’t die from vomiting and fatigue and low-grade fevers, did they? Even small ones? Not if they were in the hospital, being kept hydrated, surely?

  He’ll be okay.

  After all, Phineas had just told me the curse wasn’t designed to kill.

  He has to be okay.

  It turned out that Phineas didn’t need an hour, not quite. He called again exactly forty-three minutes later. “It’s too soon to tell for sure if this will be a full cure, but it’s already made a huge difference.”

  “I’ll take it.” I was back in my room by then, already reaching for a pen to write the recipe down.

  Luckily, I didn’t think any of the ingredients Phineas named would be too hard to find in Bristol. (Unlike some of the specialty supplies I needed to make my ink. Even a town full of witches doesn’t keep a lot of copper dust on hand.) The harder question was how I was going to get people who most likely didn’t believe in magic and counter-curses and potions to drink it.

  I thanked Phineas about fifty times, and we each agreed to keep in touch with our progress. Then I went straight to Cooper’s door.

  “I ate the donuts already, if that’s what you’re after,” he said when he opened it. His tone was level, his face expressionless. At least he was wearing a shirt, this time.

  “I know you’re mad and you think I’m a jerk,” I said. “Frankly, I’m mad too, and I’m not so convinced you’re not a jerk.”

  He crossed his arms and waited.

  “But that’s beside the point,” I went on. “We’ve both played a part in what’s happened, and now I need you to help me fix it.”

  “Did you have any particular help in mind?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Phineas came up with a potion. And who better to get strangers to drink an unidentified liquid than a chef, right?”

  And so Cooper spent the a
fternoon bringing the sick guests smoothies, which he exercised all his usual charm to get them to drink. The blueberries and bananas, he assured me, masked the bitter, herbal taste of the potion.

  I sent some over to Wendy Thaggard’s house, too. She came knocking on my door two hours later, looking as well as ever.

  “You should still be in bed,” I said.

  “So my husband tells me,” said Wendy. “But I am not going to just sit around and let the Garden Club pull this crap. I want to help.”

  “Well then, come on in. I’m not too proud to take all the help I can get.”

  I’d been sitting with Agatha, discussing the problem of Jake Foley. I wasn’t sure how to get him to drink the potion, considering he couldn’t drink at all at the moment. But judging from the last update we’d gotten on his condition, we had to find a way, and fast.

  “There’s more than one way to use a potion,” Wendy said. “I’ll go visit him in the hospital with a spray bottle, and spritz it around his room like air freshener. Claim it’s aromatherapy.”

  “Will that work, if he just breathes it in?” I asked.

  “It won’t be as effective as ingesting it, but it might do enough to get him to a place where he can drink something,” Wendy said.

  “I can go with you,” said Agatha. “Andrea knows me now. It won’t be weird if I visit.”

  “You haven’t left since the curse,” I pointed out. “You’d better bring plenty of the potion for yourself, too.”

  Agatha shrugged. “I hear that smoothie is pretty good.”

  Cooper let himself into my suite while she was talking, and I caught Wendy raising an eyebrow as she watched him pocket my extra keycard. I shook my head at her the tiniest bit.

  Believe me, it’s not at all like that.

  “How did the last round go?” I asked him.

  “The two who didn’t want the smoothie were happy to accept some soup instead,” Cooper said. “Everyone’s had it now.”

  I frowned, considering. “What about Jerry Foley?”

  “He was one of the first to drink it. He looks better already.”

  I looked from Cooper to the others. “In that case, Jerry might associate the smoothie with feeling better. Maybe he’ll want to take one to his kid, if we offer it once Jake’s eating and drinking again.” I shrugged.

  Everything sounded like a long shot, but there was nothing to do but try.

  And it worked. Agatha was back at the hotel by nightfall. When she’d left the hospital, she said, Jake Foley was sitting up and eating gelatin.

  Three days later, Jake and the rest of his family were on their way home. I doubted they’d be back, but at least they were well again.

  Everyone was, by then. The last of the sick guests had checked out, healthy and, all things considered, happy enough. Wendy was completely recovered, and so was Lydia Murdoch.

  Asher Glass had sent some health inspectors to comb through the hotel, but Lance had dealt with them, and they’d found nothing.

  We’d survived the curse.

  Colonel Phearson’s Pub opened the following weekend. I invited Cooper to dinner, as a peace offering. We’d barely talked since our fight, but we had to move forward—with solving our mutual problem, if with nothing else. Cillian Wick was still out there, still allied with Marjory and her coven, and no doubt planning some fresh torture for us. We needed to prepare ourselves.

  “Thank you for the invitation.” Cooper pulled out my chair for me before sitting down himself. “You saved me the trouble of asking you.”

  “Did I? Well then, I’ll let you pay.”

  “In that case, mind if I pick the wine?”

  “Go for it.”

  He looked over the wine list for a minute, then said without looking up, “I’m sorry. I said some things that were out of line.”

  “As did I, and I’m sorry too,” I said. “But I think we have bigger things to worry about.”

  “Agreed.”

  “What do you think their next move will be?”

  He met my eye. “I don’t know. But I can tell you I’m damn sick of it always being their move.”

  I sighed. “Well, maybe I’m ready to make a move of my own. But that doesn’t mean you’ll like it. Because you won’t.”

  “Can I get you guys some drinks?”

  The server was young and pretty. Cooper gave her his best smile and ordered a bottle of wine. “We’ll take some of those chips, too,” he added, then waited until she left before giving me a decidedly less charming look than he’d given her.

  “Should I wait to ask about this move of yours until I’ve had a drink?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll just hit you with it now. That way maybe the chips will make you feel better.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  “I had an idea the other day. Or the beginning of an idea, anyway. I think I might know how to protect Bristol. For real this time. And it doesn’t involve killing the Wicks, or anyone else.”

  His jaw got tight, but he nodded. “What does it involve?”

  “Sanctuary.”

  Cooper took my plan a lot better than I expected him to. But he also left Bristol the next day.

  “Do you remember what you said, the day of the attack?” he asked when he came to my suite that morning, to tell me he was leaving.

  “Refresh my memory,” I said.

  “You said we wouldn’t fight on their terms. We’d fight them on our terms, when we had a plan of our own.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I? But I didn’t mean—”

  “You also said I had to take responsibility for my own choices.”

  “Okay, I really didn’t mean—”

  “But you were right,” Cooper said, jumping in to interrupt me for the second time. His eyes were intense and restless, moving from my face to the window and back again. “I’m always letting someone else set the terms. My father, the Wicks, even you. It’s time to set my own terms.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So what are your terms?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I won’t keep doing things the way the Blackwoods always have. I seem to be short a willing army, but there are other ways to fight a war.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That’s what I’m off to figure out,” he said with a shrug.

  “You could figure it out here. If I get this to work…” I stopped and cleared my throat, trying to choose words that wouldn’t sound like I was offering more than I intended to. Or more than he would want. “This could be a safe place for you,” I said. “If you wanted one.”

  “It’s best if I go. For now, at least. It’s going to take you some time to learn how your father’s sanctuary worked. That’s got to be pretty complicated magic.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I agreed.

  “Well, you don’t need the Wicks breathing down your neck while you do it. Your Garden Club seems bad enough.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, who’d have thought flower ladies could be so brutal?”

  He returned my smile, but his eyes were sad. I was disappointing him again. But so be it. I was not prepared to fight his war for him. Or to risk Bristol doing it.

  “So you’re planning on drawing Cillian and Falcon off?” I asked.

  He nodded. “No way they’ll let an opportunity to catch me slip by. They can’t do anything with Bristol unless they have all the seeds anyway.”

  I swallowed and just said what I was thinking, hard as it was to admit. “I’m scared for you.”

  Cooper gave me his best smile, and I felt that old crackle of energy between us. I no longer thought it was just my imagination. But it didn’t matter. Telling a man you’re not willing to help in his life-or-death struggle for the survival of his entire family (and possibly the entire world, down the line) will kill a romance every time.

  “You don’t need to be,” he said. “I’ve lost them before. And I have the potion, if the curse is still hanging around. But I was hoping you’d write me some protection sp
ells.”

  I did, of course. As I handed them to him, he handed me something else: a small card, like a business card, but all that was on it was a website address.

  “I won’t be able to risk a phone for a while, but that’s a link to one of my dating profiles,” he said. “Check it in a couple of days. If I’m okay, I’ll post that I’ve just gotten out of a difficult relationship, and I’m open to finding a new partner.”

  I nodded and refrained from asking whether the difficult relationship would refer to Cillian Wick, or to me.

  He kissed my cheek then, his lips warm, and he smelled so good. It was all I could do not to make a fool of myself.

  “Good luck, Verity,” he said.

  There was a lot I wanted to say in return, but all that came out was, “Same to you, Cooper.”

  And then he was gone.

  I didn’t waste time—well, not much time, anyway—moping or worrying about him. My first priority was protecting my hotel, and by extension, the entire town. I could be lovesick when I had a spare minute.

  Lydia Murdoch had told me I needed to be a general in the battle for Bristol. If I was lucky, there would never be such a battle. Cillian Wick would never get those seeds, and I’d never see him again.

  But I couldn’t count on luck. I needed to become a guardian, if not a general.

  I called Phineas and asked if I might take him up on his offer to come and visit them.

  “You’re sure it’s safe to leave the hotel?” he asked.

  “I’ll bring some potion with me, just in case the curse hasn’t passed.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Because I’d like to see you, but I doubt I’ll be getting Lydia to set foot in Bristol any time soon.”

  I drove to Charlotte that same day, and made it to their house by mid-afternoon, in time for an early Sunday dinner. Lydia answered the door, looking mostly healthy, apart from the dark circles under her eyes.

  I stammered and mumbled, first a greeting, then an apology. I’d worried the entire three hour drive about my reception. Had Phineas forced her to invite me? Would she hold a grudge?

  I couldn’t say I wouldn’t, if our positions were reversed. That hadn’t been her battle. But she’d fought it anyway, as a favor to Max, and she’d been wounded.