by Robin Hale
I was confused — how did that…she was right! “Yes! They did. They found me there with her when the police found her…her body. Would that memory still be there, even if I can’t consciously recall it?”
Ramirez rose from her seat even while Spears and Krateros protested. She came down from the raised bench, ceremonial robes rustling with each step.
“It is possible that the memory was formed even if you cannot currently access it,” the dark-eyed witch said with a slow, considering nod. “It might be quite disorienting to retrieve,” she warned.
“I don’t care. Do it.” Past her I could see Rhea’s eyes flood with concern. If she could have gone through it for me, she would have. How could I do any less for her?
“Are we truly reduced to sifting through memories formed by an infant?” Krateros seethed. “This is an insult to the dignity of the deceased.”
“I must agree,” Spears said with a scowl and a nod.
“What matters is what happened,” Councilor Ma, the older shapeshifter, said with a wave of her hand. “Irregularity is not a concern.”
Ramirez came to a halt in front of me and reached down to take my hands in hers. A slight tug brought me to my feet and I nearly forgot how to stand, how to breathe comfortably, how to do any automatic thing under the weight of that stare.
“Try not to fight it, Ms. Pearson,” Ramirez said placidly. “It will be less comfortable if I have to open your mind myself.”
Then I felt her. The first touch of her magic was like the sound of claws outside my bedroom window at night: a strange threat, one that I didn’t know how to defend myself against but made every alarm in my mind go off at once.
“Relax.” Her voice was commanding but not unkind, and I tried to unwind the tension in my shoulders, my neck. I tried to imagine my mind was a fortress or a castle and deliberately opened the gates to let her in.
I couldn’t see the memories she touched but I could feel echoes of emotion. There was the day I’d signed the lease on my apartment. The day I’d thrown a dart at a map and found that according to fate — the randomness of the throw, I’d believed at the time — my next home would be Cincinnati, Ohio. Her presence hovered over the pride in my mom’s hug after I graduated from high school. There was the elation of performing in the ensemble of a school musical, the frustration when a test didn’t go my way. She traced back, back over my memories and the echoes grew even fainter the further that she went.
I could feel my triumph when I first rode my bicycle around the block, no training wheels, no mom’s hands on the back of my seat to steady me.
Laughing while mom tickled me, listening to her voice as she read me a story to help me go to sleep.
The whispers of emotion grew more and more distant. I could still taste her magic in the air, could still feel her presence in my mind, but the echoes were all but gone. Could she see anything more than I could? Was there anything left for her to find?
Evidently, there was.
The room around me disappeared and I was standing in a scene that I’d only witnessed in half-formed nightmares. I knew the smell, the ambient sound. I’d always known that the car they’d found me in was blue, but I didn’t know how I’d known it. It wasn’t a detail that my mom had been given. But in front of me in the dark, along a roadside that I recognized — god, I recognized it — was the blue sedan Olivia Bradley had been driving.
Even with my relationship to dreams…I’d always believed that this was a run-of-the-mill nightmare. But with the grim set of her mouth and the seriousness in her eyes, the older witch said that this was not the fevered imagining of a child. This was the genuine perception I’d retained before I could speak. There were strange effects. Things not very far away at all were blurry, out of focus — had this memory formed before my eyesight had cemented itself? Was that how the world had looked when I was so young?
“This is the moment of Olivia Bradley’s death,” Councilor Ramirez said and I knew that she had somehow drawn the rest of the council in to see it as well. I could almost see them, almost make out the echoes of their minds touching my own and I fought not to resist the invasion.
It was the only hope that Rhea and I had. I would let them do whatever they had to do to save her from having her powers bound. Or worse.
There was a storm that night. Rain spattered the windows and there was a mass of brown curls visible in the front seat. The sweet, familiar scent that had always meant home to me. Music on the radio. Something driving, but I couldn’t recognize it. Maybe that was something else that my age had hidden from me. Maybe my hearing hadn’t been sensitive enough to make a reliable impression of what was playing on the radio.
A darker shadow passed by the window and the car jerked to a halt. The wind changed, one of the doors opened, and I heard my mother’s voice for the first time in decades: “I won’t go back with you.”
The words chilled me, made my heart ache and I wished that I’d been transported through time rather than shown a memory from my own brain. I wanted to fight, to protect her. Absalon’s face, unchanged and horrifying, hovered in the open door as he loomed over my mother in her seat.
“Next time,” he said. “Next time I find you, you will not deny me.”
There was a thud, a terrible echoing rock through the car, and the light that had been my mother’s power snuffed out.
Outside the car, the wind howled.
“Worthy vengeance,” the young shifter murmured to himself once the image had cleared. He looked shaken, pale and sick.
To his right, Councilor Ma nodded. “It must be considered worthy vengeance.”
“But Ms. Pearson did not deliver the blow that killed him!” Councilor Krateros protested, rage high like the color in his cheeks. “It was not Rhea Barnes’ vengeance to seek.”
Squabbling broke out among the council members in rolling waves of sound — the shapeshifter contingent was clear on their position, the vampires were split, and only one of the witches had spoken. The other, the one who had seen back into my memories further than I would have thought possible, stood still in front of me, my hands clasped in hers, and stared into my eyes.
“Ms. Barnes had every right to take the killing blow,” Ramirez said, eyes never leaving my face.
The words broke through the din in the room and Spears whirled on her, scowling. “What in blazes are you talking about? There’s no evidence at all that Absalon killed any member of Barnes’ family or coven.”
A protest was on the tip of my tongue, but Ramirez cut me off.
The dark-haired witch shook her head and I could see the confidence building in her eyes when she spoke. “Rhea Barnes took worthy vengeance against one who had wronged her soul mate. She had every right.”
A fluttering rush of relief and hope and dread swept through my body in a confusing wave. Was that true? Did she have the right? Did it matter that we weren’t completely bonded?
“I would have noticed a soul bond in this room,” Krateros sneered. “These two are not bonded.”
“They have a partial bond — but it’s there. Right at the core of Ms. Pearson’s power.” One deft hand traced through the air in front of my chest where I could feel the frustration that had pulled at me since the Harvest Moon festival.
“Is that…is that enough?” Councilor Heggeman asked, brow furrowed in obvious concern. He was about three seconds from wringing his hands and shifting from foot to foot. How the hell had he been elected to anything?
“Of course it is,” the older shifter said. “Why, we have decades of cases where even compatibility in the absence of a partial bond was enough for the old laws to consider a pair joined.” She settled back into her seat, mouth pressed into a satisfied line. “Get these girls out of here so I can go home. I have a three game series DVR-ed and you all have kept me away from it long enough.”
“Forgive me, Councilor, if we’ve kept you away from your hockey.” Disdain dripped from Krateros’s voice. “There was the minor matter o
f the murder of one of my kind, after all. A member of my clan. A friend to this council.”
Guilt churned in my gut regardless of whether or not Absalon had deserved it. He’d been a person, after all. One with a community that would feel his absence. Even though I couldn’t bring myself to regret what Rhea had done — especially not since it saved her life and probably mine, no matter what the council said — I still felt a painful, grating compassion for the people who would miss him.
“Not murder,” Councilor Ma said. “Worthy vengeance.” She looked around the room, eyebrows raised on her soft, lined face. “I believe we’re done here?”
Councilor Ramirez stepped back from me and nodded. “Yes, we’re done here. All those who wish to endorse the determination of ‘worthy vengeance’, speak now.”
One by one, every councilor who sat at the high bench spoke. Every councilor except Krateros.
“And those who oppose?”
“On behalf of the vampire clans, I do oppose.”
“With five endorsements and one opposition, it is the determination of this council that the matter of the death of Absalon of Clan Leinth was carried out as worthy vengeance. All matters of sanction, probation, and sentencing are to be dropped against Laurel Pearson of Greenhollow and the hedge witch Rhea Barnes.” Ramirez’s expression didn’t change, but I could hear her words crash to the floor.
Across the room from me, Councilor Spears and Rhea wore matching wide-eyed expressions.
“All matters of probation?” Rhea asked in disbelief.
“Surely you can’t be serious, Councilor,” Spears began.
“Ms. Barnes is close to thirty years old,” Ramirez countered. “It is long past time that her probation ended. She’s no longer a child, she no longer needs the oversight of the Council.”
“She’s here for the same reason she was the first time!” Spears’ eyes were bulging.
“Oh, hardly,” tutted Councilor Ma. “She did it inside this time. Far more contained.”
The other witch sputtered incredulous protests, wordless but fairly eloquent nonetheless. The rest of the council was unmoved.
“Worthy vengeance,” Ramirez said again.
Spears scowled to match the sullen vampire. I wasn’t entirely clear on what had happened there. I just knew that we were free.
“Now leave, dears. I’m quite done with this.” Councilor Ma said brightly, already gathering her things from the bench and making her way out the back door.
I locked eyes with Rhea and felt a helpless grin crack the facade of worry and fear that had encased me. We’d done it. We were going to be okay.
Hope shone back at me from Rhea’s eyes.
24
Rhea
As the doors of the elevator closed, I held a hand out to Laurel and broke the tense silence that had stretched between us since we left the Council’s chamber.
“Come here,” I rasped and Laurel was in my arms before my next breath.
I wrapped my arm around her waist and tugged her in against my body, tangling my other hand into her hair. I resisted the urge to sob with relief at the way she nuzzled against my neck. She was warm and solid in my arms, her breath a soft caress against my sensitive skin, her hair releasing wave after wave of that scent that I couldn’t get enough of. I tightened my fingers in her hair and felt her gasp.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the silky cloud of her hair. My lips brushed against the top of her head and I wanted to follow that up with pressing kiss after kiss against every part of her that I could reach. She was safe. She was whole. She was in my arms, and we were free.
Free from Absalon, free from fear of the Council’s retribution. Fuck, I was even free from the specter of probation that had lingered overhead for my entire adult life. I couldn’t remember how to live without worry that my past might come back to haunt me again, that its horrors weren’t really over. And if I hadn’t met Laurel, hadn’t been pulled into her orbit with irresistible gravity — I might never have had the chance to figure it out.
Laurel pulled back from my grip only slightly, but it was hell letting her go. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want any more space between us than there had to be to satisfy the laws of physics.
“Don’t be sorry,” Laurel said fiercely. Her pretty hazel eyes practically flashed in the strange, low light of the elevator and her brow was lowered in something like a glare.
If I’d thought she might elaborate on that, I was wrong. She tucked her face back against my neck and tightened her arms around my waist. I couldn’t help the chuckle that her squeeze knocked out of me and I pressed my cheek against the top of her head.
“Okay,” I said and the doors opened.
Laurel had come to the Council’s chambers as the honored guest of several of its sworn marshals. That meant that her car was probably still sitting outside the wreckage of Absalon’s house.
“Let me drive you home,” I said more than asked and when Laurel nodded, I led her toward my truck. I hated dropping her hand so that we could both get into the cab, hated that I couldn’t reach across the gear shift and touch her until I was most of the way to her apartment. Stupid traffic lights.
When I did reach across, I caught her shoulders relaxing from the corner of my eye, saw the way she settled back against the seat. Something warm kindled in my chest. Every moment brought us closer to Laurel’s apartment and every moment built the already excruciating anticipation that was threatening to stop my heart.
I hesitated on the threshold to the staircase that led up to her studio. I didn’t want to assume, didn’t want to think that just because we’d gotten out of there with our hides intact that Laurel was inviting me into her bedroom — even if it was only to talk. It was late. We were both exhausted. Physically, emotionally, magically spent. But I knew that if she hinted that I was welcome, I wouldn’t leave her side that night for anything.
“Aren’t you coming up?” Laurel asked, looking back at me from the bottom of the staircase.
I nearly stumbled over my feet in my haste to follow her, and my own sheepish grin was reflected on her face, too.
“That,” Laurel said once we made it into her apartment. “Was completely insane.”
I had to agree, but my voice was caught in my throat, my chest as tight as it had been when Laurel had left Barleywick only — was it only hours before? It had been lifetimes since she’d left me standing in the ruined shell of the house where I’d grown up, among rubble from the walls and my heart.
When I found enough air to form words, the only ones I could come up with were the ones Laurel had told me not to say.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, looking sidelong at her. Maybe I could avoid the weight of her disappointment if I didn’t catch it fully in the face. “I shouldn’t have…I shouldn’t have kept it from you. That we were…what we could be to each other.” I swallowed hard and my throat was so dry that I could’ve torn myself open.
Laurel wasn’t moving, her face totally still, and I got the impression that she thought I might bolt if she startled me. Like I was a deer or something.
“I wasn’t thinking about the fact that you…I was — scared.”
Laurel started and took a step toward me. “Scared?”
I nodded and closed my eyes. “What I did…I’m — Hell. I’m responsible for the deaths of everyone I’ve loved, Laurel. Everyone. People in this community, they know my name because I got my coven killed. That’s it.” The words burned on the way out but I couldn’t afford to stop. “I carry that around with me. And I was afraid that you’d see it — you’d realize. And you’d know it was too dark for you. That I was too dark.” I looked up from the floor, tried not to let my fragile calm crumble at the clouds on Laurel’s face. “I couldn’t deal with the idea of losing a soul mate after everything else.”
It was impossible to stay standing there. I wanted to touch her, wanted to run. I scrubbed my hand through my hair and tried to push through despite everything. “And I was s
elfish. I didn’t really get that it meant that you wouldn’t — of course you didn’t know. Who would’ve told you?” I scowled and turned away. “So I’m sorry.”
Tension built in my shoulders, my back, and the air currents in the room crawled over my skin. Laurel’s hand ghosted across my lower back and my compass could find north again.
“The last thing I wanted to do,” I whispered, pressing back into her touch. “Was ruin what you’d finally found here. I’ve dealt with the fact that I lost my coven. If I made you lose yours, too…I couldn’t have coped with that.”
Laurel’s arms slipped around my waist and she buried her face against my shoulder. Dampness seeped into my shirt, finally translating her soft shudders and gasps into the tears they’d come from.
Fuck. I’d made her cry.
“Laurel, I…” I began weakly.
“No, don’t,” she said in a shaky whisper. “It’s my turn.”
So I waited. My heart took up residence in my throat and I consoled myself with the heat of her body pressed to my back, the way her hands clutched at me.
“You are the first person — aside from my mom — to make me feel like I was someplace that I belonged.”
The words scorched my skin: soft puffs of air, gentle brushes of lips, and scalding honesty pouring out against me.
“Even before Jean. Before Greenhollow. You let me invade your space and talk, even when I could tell that you weren’t comfortable being anything other than alone.” She punctuated the statement with a squeeze of my abdomen, and I rested my hands over hers cautiously. If she’d flinched, I would’ve dropped my hands in an instant, but she lifted her fingers enough to wrap around mine and held on. “And when I found out about — everything? You were the only person to make it make sense.”
My throat went tighter and I swallowed against the pricking of tears in my eyes.
“I had a crush on you from the instant I saw you — yes, even when you were yelling at me to get out of the street. You’re hot, I was helpless.” Her lips curved into a smile against my shoulder. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about how safe you made me feel.”