by Mary Martel
"Yeah, I think so," Quinton said distractedly, as he studied the mirror closely. He looked like he feared someone might appear in the reflection behind him and reach through the mirror to grab at him. I couldn't blame him, I'm sure I'd worn a similar expression the first time I'd gotten a good, close up look at the thing. "It was a long time ago though. Why?"
Why indeed.
I gave the cat a wide berth as I sidestepped him and approached the mirror with the knife held in my hand. Quinton's face was almost pressed up against the glass as he studied the markings on one corner of the frame.
I ran my hand lightly down his side, trailing my fingers along the soft material of his t-shirt and wishing it was his bare skin. He hummed under his breath, happy with my touch, and finally, maybe even happy with me. For a second, though, because I knew it wouldn't last a whole lot longer.
With his attention fixed mostly on the mirror I raised my hand and slid my knife along the tip of my pointer finger on my left hand. It wasn't deep, only a prick really, and didn't even hurt this time.
Channeling Rain and mimicking what I'd learned from him, I pressed the tip of my finger to the mirror. I closed my eyes, seeing Romero chained to the wall where I'd left him, and began drawing slow circles on the mirror in my blood.
Calling my blood from where it resides,
Deep in another whose soul it hides,
Follow the trace and let me see,
The person I seek in front of me.
I pull upon the chords of Romero Flynn,
Drawing on the blood bond now within,
As I will it, so mote it be.
Reveal him now, as I decree.
My eyes snapped open and my hand shook, but my bleeding finger remained pressed against the glass. My blood had been smeared all over the mirror in circles that overlapped each other. The center of the mirror had remained untouched by my blood and a person began taking shape inside it.
"Fuck," Quinton whispered harshly underneath his breath. "It’s really him."
Romero Flynn came into view, just as I had left him. His long, red hair hung down past his shoulders and all the way down to his naked hips in a ratty mess. His beard dangled down his chest, scraggly and unkempt. He wore not a stitch of clothing, unless shackles counted as clothing. His head lolled back, resting against the brick wall he stood up against. His arms hung up above him, strung taut with manacles around both wrists. Chains were attached to the shackles and hooked to the wall, holding him in place. The same setup had been hooked up to his ankles, his feet stretched far apart and chained to the wall.
His face was completely blank and his eyes closed. If not for the slight rise and fall of his chest, he could have looked dead. Thank goodness his chest moved or I might have had a panic attack.
Binx brushed up against my bare foot, nuzzling his furry little head against my skin. I flinched and my finger left the glass.
The image disappeared and I swayed on my feet.
When was the last time I'd eaten? I couldn't remember.
"Food," I muttered under my breath as my eyelids started to lower.
Strong arms wrapped around me, holding me up. Warm lips went to my forehead in a sweet, hesitant kiss.
"I got you, baby," Quinton muttered darkly in a voice that sent shivers down my spine. He wasn't angry this time, he was something else altogether. Something that scared the shit out of me. "I'll always take care of you. Just like you always take care of us."
Yeah, I’d been right. That had been Romero Flynn, Dash's father, chained up in some underground facility that belonged to the Council.
Our already dark world just got a whole lot darker.
And it would only get worse from here on out, I just knew it.
Chapter Seven
Secrets Didn’t Make Friends
I sat up on the couch with a start and looked around. I didn't remember falling asleep downstairs in the informal living room. I only hung out down here now when Trenton or Simon wanted to watch a movie with me or play video games on the giant flat screen in here.
My stomach let out an angry snarl and I looked down at it in surprise. I was starving. When was the last time I'd eaten anything? I couldn't remember.
I looked around in confusion. The sun was starting to rise, and for once I was grateful for the fact everyone around here seemed allergic to the use of curtains or blinds even.
They were all psycho.
"Here," Quinton murmured quietly, making me jump. He put down a steaming mug of what looked like soup on the coffee table in front of me. He sat a plate down beside the mug with thick chunks of what looked to be homemade bread slathered in butter.
"What, no coffee?" I groused, never one to miss an opportunity to give Quinton a hard time.
Don't you worry, he always deserved it. Maybe not at this very second, but give him enough time and he'd prove me right. We did this dance and we did it often.
He didn't take the bait.
Quinton leaned down and kissed me sweetly on the cheek. "You eat your soup and bread like a good girl and I'll make you some of your crack juice."
I could work with this compromise. I smiled up at him and murmured appreciatively, "Thank you."
His eyes roamed lazily over my face and they softened immediately. I liked to think he only used that look on me because that soft part of him he kept hidden away from the world belonged to me. Kind of like Quinton himself.
He left me to eat in peace while he went back to the kitchen. Hopefully to make my coffee. Wise man. It didn't simply caffeinate me, it made me a much nicer person and easier to deal with on all levels.
I fell on the soup—potato, as it turned out—like a starved animal. Between shoveling spoonfuls into my mouth, I stopped to rip off chunks of the bread, and I dunked them into the soup and shoved those babies right into my mouth as well. I didn't even care that it tasted absolutely delicious, which it did. I would have happily shoveled cardboard in there if it took the edge off my hunger.
I'd been running around, using my magic like a boss, and I'd been too stupid to stop and eat something. You had to keep the tank full and using magic burned your energy like crazy.
I was lucky Quinton was there to catch me when I passed out. I could have hit my head or something and really hurt myself.
I couldn't eat all the bread, but I finished all the soup easily. I needed to leave some room for my coffee in there, and at this rate if I drank more than one cup I'd likely explode.
I spaced out for a few minutes, or seconds, I couldn't be sure. Now that I no longer felt like my stomach was going to eat a hole in itself, I remembered my dream and the man that was Dash's father. He hadn't exactly been the friendliest guy around, but I could totally overlook that because he wasn't dead. Being alive trumped being a dick any day. I had a feeling Quinton would disagree if he knew some of the things that had come out of Romero's mouth, so I'd just keep the happy little fact that he was a bit of a dick to myself.
The couch dipped under Quinton's weight as he sat down beside me. He rested his elbows on his thighs and his hands dangled down between his open legs.
"We can't tell him."
Dash.
Quinton wanted us to keep big, big secrets from him. Life altering secrets.
"We can't tell him," I agreed with him wholeheartedly. At least for now we couldn't. When we had a solid plan and were ready for an extraction then we could tell him. Probably.
"He might hate us both for a while for keeping this secret from him."
I agree with him on that front as well. And didn't that just completely terrify me. Not to sound too dramatic here, but if Dash hated me for any reason I would just want to crawl in a hole and die.
"What's to stop him from finding out now and going off all by himself and getting himself killed? Since Rain plowed down Adrian's buddy, on their home front no less, they've got to be on high alert. There will be no getting in and out of there without their knowledge. Dash would just get himself killed and you know
it. We must keep this from him and everybody else until we can figure out how to get Romero out of there. We can't tell anyone."
I hated to admit it, but he was right about every single thing he'd said. I wanted to cry and then I wanted to go get in my Rover and drive myself to the motel so I could demand the Council give Romero to me. And who the hell knew what would happen to me if I did. There were some things girls couldn't come back from once they'd gone through them. I didn't want to be one of those girls. Ever.
We needed to come up with a plan before one of us got rash here, because I wasn't sure if Quinton was telling me these things because he was trying to convince me this was the right thing to do or himself.
"What exactly is it you're planning on keeping from not only Dash but the rest of us? I'd like to know, if you don't mind."
Quinton and I both jumped like scared little girls who just found out the boogeyman was real and standing directly behind us. We whipped around so fast I almost fell off the couch. The only thing that stopped me was Quinton's hand pressed against the small of my back. He moved faster than I did.
"Julian," Quinton snapped impatiently. "What are you doing lurking around in my house and spying on people? It's incredibly rude."
Leave it to Quinton to get caught with his hand in the cookie jar and act like a prissy, stuck up twat who'd done nothing wrong. God, he could be such an asshole and he made it look like he didn't even have to try. It was a gift, really, it was.
If possible, the look on Julian's face got even darker as he eyed Quinton like he wanted to leap across the back of the couch and beat the life out of him.
Yikes, and here I thought they were such good friends.
Fortunately for the both of them, I'd had enough male bullshit and fist fights to last me for at least another month or two. I wouldn't be greedy and say longer, because I lived with a bunch of men and sometimes shit happened.
I turned on Quinton and poked him in the chest with my finger. "We could use his help. I think we should just tell him the truth."
Besides, it would make me feel a whole lot less guilty if one more person knew the truth. That way we could spread out the blame a little amongst all of us. And, added bonus, Julian really could help us out here. He knew all kinds of nifty tricks that might be useful to us.
Quinton glared at me. "I thought we just agreed we weren't going to tell anyone else, and then when the first person comes along, you're ready to go blabbing your mouth immediately. Jesus, Ariel, where's your spine?"
He was correct, of course. I sucked at deception when it came to the ones I loved. So sue me.
I might be better off if I avoided being around the others until we had this sorted, because I wouldn't be able to hold up under the pressure, I could see it now.
"Why don't you both tell me what's going on and I'll decide if I can help you out or not. Hmm?" Julian was barely containing his anger. It slithered just below the surface of his skin, itching to come out.
He didn't like secrets.
None of us did.
Secrets didn't make friends.
I didn't wait for Quinton's permission. He wasn't the boss of me. I drank my coffee from a pretty yellow mug with my name on it while I spilled everything about the dream and the mirror to Julian. Quinton, bless him, sat there with his mouth shut the entire time and listened.
Julian ended up moving around the couch and sitting beside me. He visibly grew paler and more distressed with each word spoken. He ended up hunched over on himself with his arms wrapped around his middle. His face had lost its unhealthy paleness, but had taken on a disturbing green hue that made him look positively ill.
"Please don't puke in here," I muttered under my breath, hoping not to further upset him. I could handle a lot of things, but vomiting really wasn't one of them. It wasn't the actual vomit that did me in, but the smell of it and mostly the sounds one made while actually vomiting. Those lovely things combined triggered my own need to retch and, well, that was just plain old nasty.
"I feel like puking," Julian grumbled.
"Honestly, so do I," Quinton said. "The whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach. First Isobel, now Romero. Who else is the Council hiding and what horrors are they going through? The Council needs to be stopped. They've taken things too far."
"Fuck the Council," Julian spat back. "We can worry about them after we get Romero back. He needs to be our main focus for now. He's the only thing that should matter to us."
"Yeah, I agree. But how do we go about doing that?"
They went back and forth, tossing ideas out at each other. I zoned them out as I got up to get a refill on my coffee. I didn't go back to the couch. I took my piping hot mug of coffee over to the sliding glass door. I slid it open and stepped out onto the back porch.
I sat down at the cute little two-seater wrought iron chair and round table set. The white paint was chipped in several places, marking it with age. It probably came out of one of Quinton's storage units. One day I wanted to go through them all and dig through all the crap his family had accumulated over the years. I bet it was like the world's greatest treasure chest. I never mentioned it to him because he'd have my ass there in no time, insisting I take half the crap home with me. I didn't need any more crap, my life was currently full to the brim with it.
I watched the sun rise while drinking my coffee, and the second cup was almost empty when I thought I might have figured out a way to solve all of my problems. There were a few issues with my solution though. Like the men in the other room working on doing some plotting of their own. They'd be a serious problem for me. So would the rest of the guys in the house. And my guardians. Those guys would be a serious problem for me. And Rain. Rain would kill me if I didn't get myself killed first.
But I was going to do it. No matter what.
Because, for Dash, I could do anything.
Even if he hated me afterwards.
Some people were worth absolutely everything.
Chapter Eight
Poor Tyson Alexander
True to his word, Adrian had called days later to deliver not only his but the entire Council's formal apology due to his childlike temper tantrum and the rage he'd directed at me. Personally, I thought formal apologies were better in person and doing it over the phone was rather lame, but this was Adrian we were talking about.
He'd also had one of his minions deliver several gifts to me. As it turned out, Quinton wasn't the only one who hoarded his family heirlooms and antiques.
The Council apparently collected not only theirs, but that of the dead witches who'd died at the hands of reapers or whatever, and when the Council swooped in to dispose of the bodies and dispatch the reapers, they took all of their belongings into their possession.
And some of those things now belonged to me. Like a necklace with a whopper of a diamond dangling from it, and a set of bangles that had diamonds going all the way around the entire circle, and they shined so bright you could probably see those suckers glinting all the way from the moon. There were twelve of them.
I locked them up in the safe in my closet and had zero intention of ever wearing them. Even though those bracelets sure were pretty to look at. I thought the Council giving me things that had belonged to dead witches was really creepy. When Quinton did it, it was incredibly sweet but also just a tad bit sad. When Adrian did it, I wanted to gouge his eyes out with a wooden spoon.
Both Quinton and Julian had taken to watching me like hawks since they'd found out about Romero. Or vultures, take your pick. They'd yet to come up with a solution on their own, and I'd yet to share mine with them. I was worried they'd freak and lock me up for my own good like the overbearing alpha males they were.
I closed the safe door and stood up. When I turned around, Tyson stood directly behind me and I let out an embarrassing girly shriek. My hand went over my heart in an attempt to contain it and keep it caged inside my chest where it belonged.
"Tyson," I wheezed in a strained voice. I looked arou
nd my closet in a state of panic. I really needed to stop spending time with people in my closet. "What are you doing in here?"
I told my racing heart to calm the hell down. I was doing nothing wrong here, he couldn't know. He didn't know anything.
Usually, we were partners in crime. Tyson wouldn't try and stop me, but he wouldn't let me go alone either. He would insist we go together, and I feared I would cave and let him.
"What are you doing in here?" he shot back. "For the past week you've been weird and jumpy and you've been avoiding not only myself but everyone. I want to know why."
I hadn't even attempted to hide my state of distress from the people in my life. There was enough going on that they could take their pick of reasons as to why I was jumpy.
But Tyson wasn't like everyone else. We had a special bond. He wasn't just one of my boyfriends or my partner in crime. He was also my very best friend, and quite possibly the very best friend any girl could have.
"Will you go somewhere with me?" Tyson asked.
I looked at him in confusion. "Go?" I repeated stupidly. "Where do you want me to go?"
He took hold of my hand and slipped his fingers through mine, lacing them together.
I wasn't fooled by the sudden change in direction. Ty wouldn't let it go this easily, and wherever it was he wanted me to go with him, I knew we'd be playing a round of twenty questions until he got what he thought he wanted from me.
Poor Tyson Alexander. The job of being my best friend was oftentimes a serious pain in the ass. And it wasn't a job you could just scrape off whenever you'd had your fill. He was in for a life sentence with me and only death would free him.
"Do you trust me, Ariel?" he asked, as he tugged on my hand, pulling me forward. I fell into his hard body and my free hand automatically came out to take the sting out of my landing. My palm met with the soft fabric of his t-shirt and his hard abdominals underneath. My front connected with his side and he held our connected hands out behind him. His free hand came up to my face and he ran the backs of his knuckles along my cheekbone. On the non-scarred side because he was a good boyfriend like that.