Psychic for Hire Series Box Set

by Hermione Stark

  “I knew I would find you here,” Xander spits out. “Does she know why you’re here?”

  “Back off.”

  Xander sneers. “When you interfere in my private life, I’ll interfere in yours.”

  “If you have a problem with Caroline speaking to me, you need to talk to her about it.”

  “Oh, I plan to. In the meantime, does your girlfriend here know what you’re really after?”

  I feel Storm’s body stiffen. Until then I had been furious at Xander for intruding, but suddenly I am filled with anxiety.

  “Storm?” I ask.

  His single swift glance promises to tell me later.

  Xander looks smug. “You haven’t told her.”

  Storm takes a menacing step towards Xander. “That is none of your concern.”

  “The hell it isn’t. You don’t get to come here and play games with my fiancée. You don’t get to play games with my guests.”

  “I’m not the one playing games. Just ask your fiancée.” Storm smirks.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You should know what it means. You damn well know what kind of woman you’re marrying. She likes to have her fun at any cost. Get used to it.”

  “Don’t speak about her like that,” Xander snaps.

  “Since when were you protective of women?” Storm sneers. “We both know what you’ve done.”

  They stare at each other for a split second, their faces both flushed in fury, and then they rush towards each other.

  I cry out in shock at the crash of their bodies colliding at breakneck speed. They fight, fists flying, pummeling. I scream at them to stop. But they don’t listen. This is about them, not me. They have more history than Storm told me. They beat each other, fast, vicious, bloody. They don’t stop.

  The violence is horrifyingly swift. I’ve never seen anything like it. They hit each other like they want to kill each other.

  They grapple. Xander picks Storm up and throws him bodily against my mirror. It shatters into pieces, and I shriek. But Storm is standing again. He runs at Xander low, slamming into his legs. They fall crashing against my bed. I cower away from the violence, backing towards the door.

  I feel stunned into inaction. Is this what leads to what I saw in my visions? Are they going to kill each other?

  Chapter 33

  DIANA

  “Stop it!” I shout, but Storm and Xander are too busy fighting to hear me.

  I look for a knife, a gun. There are none. This fight cannot be where the stabbing or shooting happens. But the strangling? If Xander strangles Storm, will I be able to stop it?

  Their fists and limbs are striking so swiftly and viciously that I dare not intercede to pull them apart.

  “Storm! Please stop,” I shout, hoping that he will hear me.

  My shouting and the sounds of the fight draws attention, and the next thing I know several of the girls and their paramours are crowding in the open doorway to peer in. My instinct says to shut the door on them, to keep this private, and yet their presence is a relief. Xander can’t kill Storm in front of them.

  They have camera phones in their hands. They are recording everything. The princess’s fiancé and her ex-boyfriend fighting in my bedroom. Me in my torn dress which has dropped down again to reveal too much skin. Suddenly I realize what this must look like.

  Muttering a curse, I drag my bodice up. It is futile, because their cameras have already caught it. One of the girls steps into my room, the better to film Storm and Xander pummeling each other. And then she points her camera at me, videoing my look of outrage, my efforts to hide my body.

  “Turn that off!” I tell her, but she ignores me.

  The others stay in the doorway, as if worried about getting too close to the fight, or maybe worried about guaranteeing their ability to flee the moment security turns up.

  “Call for help, please!” I say, but no one does.

  I turn away from the cameras. This will be all over the news tomorrow. Hell, it’s probably all over social media already. The millions of people voraciously following every piece of news about the upcoming royal wedding will see it. Even Mrs Colton who had nothing good to say about Xander Daxx kept up on the news of his engagement. The Coltons will see this video. The Coltons will know where I am.

  I stand by my doorway, frozen with mortification, unable to think how to stop this. And then a woman pushes her way through the group of people crowded in the doorway. It is the disapproving bony matron who had brought me here that first day. She grabs me by the arm and pulls me impatiently through the crowd and out into the hallway. Some of them keep their cameras on me, filming us, but the woman determinedly guides me up the hallway and away from them.

  She goes through the open doorway of one of the succubae’s rooms and grabs a silk robe and throws it at me.

  “Put it on,” she barks.

  I obey automatically, relieved to no longer have to clutch at my gaping dress. When I stop holding it up, the dress slips right off. I step out of it. The woman watches me. The stony disapproval on her face makes me feel embarrassed. She is old enough to be my mother, and her stiff black and white uniform reminds me of a schoolmistress. If Princess Caroline doesn’t know what’s happened already, this woman will probably tell her.

  “Did you call security?” I ask her.

  “They’ll be on their way.”

  “I have to get back to my room,” I tell her. “I have to make sure they’re okay.”

  “Those two grown men are more than capable of taking care of themselves,” she snaps.

  “You don’t understand—”

  “About the rumor you’ve spread? A murderer in the castle?”

  I gasp. “How did you know it was me?” And then I blush. If she hadn’t really known, she does now.

  And yet my words didn’t seem to have surprised her at all. She already knew.

  I back away towards the door. “I really need to get back.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve made enough trouble already?” she says.

  She is looking at me the way Lila had looked at me earlier, her eyes full of blame. Lila had warned me against making trouble, and she’d been right. Worse, I had thoughtlessly used the girls to spread my rumor. And now this woman might throw Lila and the others out. And what if Lila needs to be here as badly as I do? I never thought about that.

  “It was my fault,” I tell the woman. “None of the other girls had anything to do with this.”

  “Come with me,” she says tersely, marching out of the room, seeming in no doubt that I will follow her.

  I hesitate in the doorway, glancing back towards my room. Security officers have arrived and are dispersing the crowd. If they see me I will have to go with them and explain what I’ve done. Storm will be better off without me.

  Hoping the woman can help smooth things over for the girls, I hastily follow her. She has opened a door in the middle of the corridor, and she rushes me through it. A narrow winding staircase is ahead of us. We climb up it, me following her up many flights all the way to the top.

  We emerge in a corridor not too dissimilar from the one below, except that this one is shabby. The walls are paneled with dark wood that is scratched up and decades out of date. The carpet is faded and thin. Her heels strike it sharply as she leads me into a room at the end of the corridor.

  She holds the door open, and barks, “In!”

  I do as she asks. Inside is a large bedroom that is plainly furnished, but full of all the essentials one needs to live. A bed neatly covered with a printed throw, a stout wardrobe, a desk in a corner, and a little round dining table with two wooden chairs around it. A kitchenette is off to the side, and I can see a door that leads to a bathroom. It is a little self-contained apartment. It must be hers.

  She tells me to sit in one of the chairs, and goes into the kitchenette to put the kettle on. This surprises me. I had expected a telling off. She comes back with two cups of tea, and gives me one
. It is pleasantly sweet.

  “So, erm, why did you think it was me who spread the rumor?” I ask.

  She is examining me, her eyes as sharp as those of a hawk. “You’re nothing like I thought you would be,” she says.

  I blink in surprise. “What was I supposed to be like?”

  “Better.”

  The judgement in her voice makes me indignant. I raise my chin. “I didn’t make them fight. Did Princess Caroline send you to get me? Does she want me gone?”

  “She didn’t send me,” she says shortly. “I came myself to stop you from making things worse.”

  “What things?” I say angrily.

  She hasn’t touched her tea. She gets up from the table where she had sat so briefly and begins pacing. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that you’ve upset Princess Caroline, but then you had to spread that stupid rumor, and now–”

  “It’s not a stupid rumor,” I say hotly. “It’s the truth!”

  “Quiet!” she snaps. “You should have had the sense to keep your mouth shut about it. And now you’ve landed yourself in a ruckus between the Princess’s fiancé and this tarnished celebrity type. And worse, the video is all over the internet already for the world to see!”

  “Don’t call Storm that!” I snap.

  “You stupid, stupid girl!”

  “Do you think I wanted that video all over the internet?” I cry out. I rub my face in despair, imagining the Coltons seeing it. “Is it really out already?”

  “How do you think I knew where to find you?” she says. “Your mother would be ashamed of what you’ve become. If I had known you were such a self-obsessed, arrogant, attention-seeking little twit, I would never have invited you here!”

  Her angry words land like a slap. I’m stunned, and humiliated that she thinks that I wanted Storm and Xander to fight over me. That I wanted to be filmed like that. I open my mouth to tell her off, and then the last thing she said sinks in.

  “You?” I say incredulously. “You invited me here?”

  Chapter 34

  DIANA

  “You knew my mother?” I say, my voice getting louder.

  “Quiet!” the woman hisses. “These are staff apartments. Do you want people to hear you?”

  I make an effort to lower my voice. “Why did you invite me here? And why didn’t you come to see me sooner? Did you think I’m a succubus?”

  She looks incredulous. “A succubus? Don’t be ridiculous! Of course you’re not! I invited you here as a guest.”

  “If I wasn’t invited here for being a succubus, then why?”

  “Did the invitation I send to you say anything about working?” she says scathingly.

  I shake my head.

  She gets up from her chair and starts pacing. “I didn’t even know if you got it. I sent it through your mother’s lawyers. I didn’t know how else to reach you. But then you turned up in those awful clothes and I had to do something.”

  “I didn’t have anything to wear,” I mutter, embarrassed to admit to my poverty.

  “What on earth happened to your things?” she demands.

  “I had no things!” I say hotly. “I had to escape from the Coltons! Do you think they would have just let me walk out of the house and come here?”

  A funny look comes over her face. She is disconcerted, and… and something else I can’t quite read. “Are you saying that your uncle and aunt were keeping you prisoner?”

  “They never treated me as if they were my uncle and aunt,” I say bitterly.

  “I see.” She sinks into her chair. Her eyes rake me up and down. “I see,” she says, more heavily this time.

  “See what?” I snap.

  “That’s why you didn’t care about them.”

  “You’re damn right I don’t care about them.” I cross my arms defensively over my chest. The look of pity that I hate so much is beginning to come on to her face.

  “Why did you invite me here?” I ask again. I cannot fathom why on earth she would do it.

  She fiddles with her teacup now. “I see that your mother never told you anything. This is not what I expected.”

  Clearly she doesn’t know about my amnesia. I wonder what it is that my mother was supposed to tell me. And how the hell she knew my mother.

  “Who are you?” I demand.

  “Ms Celeste. I am employed by Princess Caroline.”

  “I knew it!” I glower at her. “So she did send you to get rid of me!”

  “I did not come to get you for that reason.”

  “Then why?”

  She sighs heavily. “Before I came to work here I was a colleague of the woman to whom you were given. Your adoptive mother. It was my understanding that when you turned eighteen you would come into your inheritance. I invited you here to give you an opportunity to meet important people and set you on the path to your destiny.”

  I let out a harsh giggle of incredulity. “My destiny?”

  She looks perfectly serious. “Yes, destiny.”

  “Because I’m a psychic?” I demand angrily. “I’m supposed to spend my life in the service of mankind, making other people’s lives better?”

  Her eyes narrow. “You are special. You bear the Godstone. Do not pretend that you are ordinary.”

  “What?” I am stunned. My hand falls automatically to cover my navel, and then I quickly drop it, afraid that I have given myself away. Her eyes linger there, seeming to see through my robe. I shiver. She knows exactly what is there, hidden beneath my clothes.

  “You know?” I whisper.

  She nods.

  She called it a Godstone. If she knew what I was she would have called it a hellstone. And yet she knew it was there. How could she know that?

  “What the hell is it?” I ask, desperate to know.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” My voice rises in anger. “Did you and your colleagues do this to me? Did you put it there because… because…” My voice trails off. I don’t want to say what I am out loud.

  “You were born with it,” she says. “No one knows why. He killed them all. Of those who knew about your existence, I am the only one left.”

  “Who killed them?”

  She gives me a searing look. “You know who.”

  I gape at her. She can’t be talking about DCK. I never told anyone that part of my dream.

  “Why are you saying this?” I explode. I realize my body is tense as if posed for flight. It hits me that I wanted to flush a killer out of hiding and maybe this is it. This woman who knows too much about me – who is she really?

  “Why did you bring me here?” I demand.

  “To help you.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You have to. You’re not safe here.”

  “What about my mother?” I demand. “Did he have something to do with her death?”

  Her eyes flash. That look of judgement again, as if I am a disappointment. “I don’t know,” she says.

  “Then what do you know?” I sneer.

  “I know that he must have killed them,” she hisses. “So many of us dead all within a year of each other. The entire order. Only I survived. I fled. The shock when I read in the news that your mother was killed… But that was just an accident, I thought. Your aunt and uncle took you in, and I hoped that you would be safe there in your anonymity.”

  “An order?” I ask. “Who were this order?”

  She seizes my hands and leans forward to say intensely, “A group of those who had studied the histories of the Godstone. You are not the first to be born with it. We wanted to keep you safe, give you a chance to grow up.”

  My mind is whirring. What the hell is she talking about? All I wanted was to catch a killer and save Storm and Xander. Not invite this craziness into my life.

  I try to untangle my hands from hers. “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

  “It is no mistake,” she says heatedly. There is a crazy fire in her eyes. “Throughout histo
ry some have been are born with the stone of God embedded in their navels. Men who have changed the tides of history. But you’re a girl. You’re vulnerable. We feared people would want to use you.” She abruptly lets go of my hands, and seems to sag a little. “And now he’s coming for you. He’ll know you are here.”

  The way she says it makes me feel afraid. I try to shake it away. “I think you’ve made a mistake. I’m not special.”