The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2)

by A. K. Caggiano

  CHAPTER 5

  RECIPROCATE

  Sleep was not coming to Lorelei. The alalynx gave her a disgruntled chirp as Lorelei shifted her over to slip out of bed. She apologized to the winged cat, throwing a sweatshirt on over her tank top and pajama shorts and grabbed her sketchpad.

  Even when the manor was full up, the sitting room was empty most late nights, especially after midnight. She brought two cups of tea in, one for herself and another for the snoozing Mr. Ecknees in his rocker by the fire. She took a look at the book he’d supposedly been reading, Gilded Faery Tales, noting the old marker, torn at the edges and stuffed into its middle, and wondered how long ago he’d started it before falling into his seemingly endless slumber. Then she greeted the hearth sprites in a whisper and wandered past the twinkling lights the tree was covered in to sit on the loveseat before the front window.

  The porch light illuminated a bit of the yard. The trees were outlined black against the night sky, brighter than usual from a gently glowing moon that reflected off the clouds. Knowing what lurked beyond Moonlit Shores Manor made her thankful for its walls, and Lorelei idly dragged her pencil across a fresh page, the loose form of a fox coming to life under its tip. It was low to the ground with a bent paw raised. There really hadn’t been anything to fear from the one she saw in the woods, she realized now, it had perhaps even been hurt, but at the time she couldn’t help but be frightened.

  Another figure came up out of her lazy sketching, something like a horse, but then she scribbled over the poor anatomy and moved to a clean spot. The mayor’s words had been rolling over in her mind as well as the new faces she’d seen, and she started to sketch out a head, sloppy, then a second, sharper, and finally a third, good enough to be somebody. She gave it features, familiar ones, ones she hadn’t seen for a while.

  “Can’t sleep either?”

  Lorelei started at the voice then glanced over her shoulder. Conrad was standing in the doorway to the sitting room, a hand scratching the back of his head, further mussing up white-blond hair. He stretched with a yawn, the t-shirt he wore reading Hagan Transmutation Team in block letters pulled tight against his chest and revealing a sliver of stomach. Then he collapsed in on himself with a sigh. “Uh, what happened in here?”

  “Ziah happened.” Lorelei hid her sketchpad behind her back, pulling her bare legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees. “She’s doing Christmas.”

  He wandered into the room and took a look around, sticking his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. It was hard to look aloof in pajamas, but he was certainly trying. “Yeah, I’ve heard of this.” He came up to the back of the loveseat and eyed the garland around the window. “Looks…wintery.”

  Lorelei took a sip of her tea, feeling him behind her. “I’m surprised you’re awake,” she said. “Don’t warlocks have a whole bunch of remedies for sleeplessness?”

  “We do.” He came around the seat and dropped in next to her. “But sometimes you earn yourself some insomnia.”

  The deep purple circles under his eyes were made that much worse against how pale he was, but when he glanced over at her she honed in on the phthalo emerald of his irises, glassy with the reflection of the Christmas lights. The two sat in silence for a few moments, staring, and then his voice cut in, quick and short. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said instinctively. It really wasn’t, of course, but that wasn’t in her to say.

  “No, it’s not.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face.

  Lorelei hesitated with the mug to her lips, watching him fidget.

  “I know I should explain,” he said through his hands, “but it’s easier to just avoid things.”

  “Didn’t know I was things,” she muttered, taking a sip then putting her mug on the side table. Ah, there was her anger, much easier to access passively.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he stressed, sitting back, the annoyance in his voice reminiscent of when Bridgette was picking a fight with him. But then he squinted at the ceiling and let out a low breath. “I knew you’d start asking questions, so I kind of…”

  “Hid in the basement?”

  He grunted in concession.

  In the reflection of the window, their figures stared back at themselves and then each other. They both looked very tired. “Are you done doing that now?” she asked his reflection.

  Carefully, his reflection nodded back.

  “Cool.” She turned toward the real him, sitting up on her knees. “Because I do have some questions. A lot actually.”

  He snorted, a tired laugh, and held up a hand. “Blackball.”

  “Oh, shut up.” She knocked his hand back down. “I want to know about Byron. The dude did try to kill me, so I think it’s only fair.”

  Conrad grunted again, though this time it was more of a groan. “He’s my brother. Older, and if you can believe it, meaner. He killed our parents. It’s a sore spot.”

  “I know all that, but why? To inherit this place?”

  He was shaking his head, staring out the window into the darkness beyond the manor, but she knew he meant he didn’t really know.

  She poked at the cushion between them. “So how does Arista fit in? I thought she was trying to get rid of you so she could keep control of the manor, but I was way off.”

  “She doesn’t want this place,” he said. Conrad stared languidly forward, and the next part came out like he cast an enchantment on himself to force out the truth. “She wants nothing more than to leave here, really, but I made that impossible. She was bound by my parents’ wills to hold onto it for me—for both of us actually—but Byron didn’t show up when he was old enough to inherit at eighteen, so she waited around another seven years for me. Eventually she got sick of waiting around for me to grow up.”

  Arista had been wanting to release her temporary right to the estate to Conrad, but he hadn’t yet agreed to take it despite being capable for the last five years. Lorelei suspected it had something to do with needing to declare Byron dead legally—even though he had killed their parents, and even though the first thing Conrad had done when he saw him again was haul off and punch him in the face, there was still a deep-seated sadness there whenever he mentioned his brother.

  Arista had made a last-ditch effort to make it happen without Conrad’s agreement, filing for Byron’s death certificate after he’d been missing for fifteen years with the help of Mayor Blackburn and his authority over the city, but the timing was unfortunate, Byron showing up just before she could get things finished.

  “Even if you had agreed and gotten all the paperwork sorted out,” asked Lorelei, “what would have happened if Byron came back afterward?”

  “Bridgette’s father was intending to draw up a new deed and enchant it, but I don’t know if it would have worked with the original still existing, wherever it is. I guess it would have become a legal thing, but I can’t really imagine Byron taking me to court.” He was right about that—Byron likely thought of himself as the judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. “Not that it matters, I even screwed that up, so now we’re here.”

  “I didn’t realize Bridgette’s dad had that kind of power.” Lorelei thought back to city hall and the stamp the mayor carried in his pocket. Maybe all of this was actually his reason for sending the magistratus to the manor. Maybe her humanity was off the hook. “Does the mayor know about Byron coming back? About everything that happened?”

  He shook his head, glancing over to the doorway into the foyer, then back to her. “Arista put off having Chuck draw up Byron’s death certificate, and they haven’t spoken since. I also haven’t said anything to Bridgette, but she definitely knows something is…wrong.”

  Lorelei looked down at her knees, her legs tucked under her. So, they still had this secret, he hadn’t even told his girlfriend yet. Something in her chest fluttered, and then she squashed it like a mosquito.

  Conrad looked especially tired then, dropping his head back
on the loveseat and slouching down with his knees splayed out. Her eyes settled onto his arm, the scar where the trow had attacked him healed and the edge of that weird tattoo peeking out from under the sleeve of his slightly too small t-shirt. He wouldn’t normally dress like that around the manor, but she supposed he didn’t expect to see anyone so late and forewent pulling on his signature, long-sleeved flannel. The marks that extended below his bicep were darker than the time she’d seen them before, and she knew they crawled up over his shoulder and down his side. In fact, she’d seen a lot more than just the tattoo that time, almost too much.

  Her eyes darted back up to his face. There was only a little bruising left around his right eye from the fistfight he and Byron had devolved into despite their magical abilities. His avoidance of her—everyone really—made a certain kind of sense then; there would be a lot of questions if he walked into the kitchen one morning, limping, face black and blue. “Hey, your nose,” she lilted, noting how straight it still was. “It didn’t end up broken?” She was sure, after all the blood, it had to be. He was lucky; it was a pretty nice nose.

  He blinked over at her then gestured to its bridge. “Oh, yeah. It actually was broken at first, but Bridgette kept insisting I go to this witch in Bexley who could fix it. Finally went yesterday.” He rubbed it and added under his breath, “Went out the back door while everyone was having lunch.”

  She frowned then tipped her head to the side. “You got a nose job?”

  “No, I didn’t get a nose job,” he said like it was an insult to even suggest. “She just put it back how it originally was.”

  “Did she?” Lorelei leaned toward him and squinted. “Kinda looks better than the original. Goes up a little at the tip and everything.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He prodded at the end then winced. She laughed as he crossed his eyes. “It really doesn’t, right?”

  “No, it looks the same as it always did. But if you can do plastic surgery like that with no recuperation time, you should really be offering it to the rest of the world.”

  He squinted at his reflection in the dark window. “Well, it was painful and hardly worth it, so I wouldn’t suggest it.”

  She almost asked him why he bothered then, but thought better of it. She already knew the answer anyway. “I bet.”

  “Really.” He furrowed his brow then smirked over at her. “I’m suffering here. In fact, you should be feeling bad for me right now.”

  “Aw, should I?” Her lip started to curl up, eyes meeting his, then she looked away. Nope, not appropriate, she insisted silently to herself, then changed the subject. “Guess who I saw again.”

  His face darkened, and he sat up. “Who?”

  “That unicorn in the forest. Would not let me take a picture with him though, kind of a snob if you ask me.”

  Conrad laughed, falling back into the couch. “Oh, sure you did.”

  “I did,” she stressed. “On my way back from town today. I got all creeped out in the woods, and then it was just there. Like magic.”

  He eyed her. “Really? Even after…” He didn’t finish the thought, but shook his head and just laughed some more.

  She still had no idea why it was so funny; he’d been equally amused when she told him about seeing a unicorn when they met for the first time, but she was glad he was at least not being so sad and broody anymore. “Yeah, so we had a nice chat, and we’re basically best friends now.” She reached for her cup of tea on the side table, and her sketchbook shifted out from behind her.

  “What’s this?” Conrad deftly slipped his arm around her back and plucked the book out from where she’d wedged it.

  “Give it back!” She sloshed her tea, rushing to put it back down, but he was already flipping through the pages.

  “Did you do all these?” He was on a page filled with a study of the alalynx: curled up in a ball, flopped out on her back, wings splayed, stretching up to swat at a faery. Lorelei leaned over him to take the book away, but he held it at arm’s length on his other side and held her back with his free hand. “Gods, this looks just like her.”

  “Well, I see her all the time, I know what she looks like,” she mumbled, struggling to push his arm down and stretching across him, but his wingspan was significantly wider than her own.

  “Hey, come on,” he said, turning so that his face was only an inch from hers. “Let me see.”

  She hovered there, suddenly too close to him. She had both of her hands wrapped around his arm now, up on her knees, his shoulder pressed into her to keep her at bay. Even in the middle of the night on the edge of winter, he was warm and smelled like cardamom and pine. And he was still giving her that damn smirk.

  “No way, they’re just practice, not meant for anyone else to see.” Lorelei pushed down hard on his arm and stretched as far as she could, teetering dangerously across his lap.

  Conrad let her struggle a moment longer, then slowly lowered the sketchbook with a melodramatic sigh. She took it as soon as it was close enough and sat back, but he didn’t let go of the other end, tugging her close to him again. “Fine, have it back, but I just want to point out two things: one, it’s really unfair to make me over-share and not reciprocate—”

  “—oh, hello, pot, meet kettle—”

  “—and two, you know I can just tie you up with a binding spell and do whatever I want.” He let go of the sketchbook, and she watched his hand, waiting for a blue spark to alight his fingers and do just that, but he didn’t conjure up any magic. “But I’m working on being nicer, so you’re welcome.”

  She did her best not to look at him but could still feel his eyes on her. He didn’t mean it the way it sounded, telling herself she’d imagined his suggestive tone to keep from going completely red. Then against all sense, she offered up the book. “Just for a minute.”

  Conrad grabbed it back triumphantly and started looking through the pages. There were studies of the asters and goldenrods by the bee boxes, a page full of weathered fence posts and crumpled feed bags with a little cartoony goat in the corner, a spread of windows, the ones on the manor that looked like eyes and the frilly, craftsman ones on the cottage and the sturdy, square ones on the barn. She winced whenever he flipped to something new, but also when he didn’t, lingering on her attempts at capturing the hearth sprites jumping in the fireplace, the way light fell into the conservatory over the fiddle-leaf figs, the exact curvature of the railing on the back porch. Lorelei rarely shared her work, and when she did no one ever looked so methodically. If anxiety could kill, she wouldn’t have been surprised to just die right there on the loveseat.

  “Okay, that’s enough.” She grabbed the sketchbook away before he could get to the pages where she’d mindlessly sketched faces over the last week, a few people featured much too heavily for him to see.

  He blinked down at where the illustrations had been, then looked over at her from the corner of his eye. “I recognized everything in there,” he said quietly. “But it was all so much…softer.”

  “Ah, well, yeah.” She hugged the book to her chest. “I know they’re not totally accurate, but I told you they were just practice, and I sort of left school before I finished all my classes, so I’m not that good—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’m saying they’re…they’re better.” Conrad turned to her fully. “That’s how you see the manor. You really care about this place, don’t you?”

  Her shoulders relaxed, and she tipped her head to the side. “Of course I do, Conrad.” Her fingers dug into the book’s cover, and there was a tug at the inside of her chest, gentle, but there, and the next words came out unconsciously. “I love it.”

  “I need your help,” he said suddenly, leaning in. She was surprised, blinking back at him, not sure what to say. “I know we couldn’t find the deed to the manor before, but I don’t think we were looking in the right place. The original has to be here still, and I think I have to find it.”

  “Arista said it was lost, maybe even destroyed.”
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  “I don’t believe that. Would you be willing to help me look?”

  Lorelei had almost died the last time she agreed to search for the deed. “Yes.”

  Relief took his face, and she grinned back. If nothing else, the location of the deed was a mystery she desperately wanted to solve, but if she was being honest—and if she couldn’t be with herself than there was truly no one else—there was at least something else pushing her to search. Magic did that sometimes, a sort of unspoken and unwritten rule, and it came disguised as lots of other things.

  Conrad rubbed his smooth jaw, nodding. “There are a lot of places to check, but the deed has to be here somewhere. I don’t know where, but I can just feel it.”

  “What deed?”

  They both reeled on the loveseat at the sound of someone else’s voice.

  Bridgette was standing in the doorway, leaning up against the wall with arms crossed in a pink bathrobe. She scowled at them both, totally pissed off. “Well?”

  CHAPTER 6

  SINCE, LIKE, FOREVER

  If there truly were seven layers of the nether, each increasingly worse than the last as Ziah so frequently swore about when miffed, Lorelei was sure she’d entered at least the fifth one. There were, actually, nine layers of the nether, but the last two were so bad they were often forgotten on purpose. And almost no one mentioned the Abyss unless they were joking.

  “Ew, ew, ew, EW!” Bridgette’s voice echoed down the long hall of the basement just sharp enough to theoretically push them all off the edge of level five into six. “I just walked through another spiderweb.” She leveled her flashlight at Lorelei, blinding her. “Don’t you ever clean down here? It’s disgusting!”

  Lorelei was beginning to hope whatever left those webs would roll them all up and drain them dry, but instead she put on the sickeningly sweet smile she gave to guests who liked to complain for the fun of it. “Actually, it’s the faeries in charge of the housekeeping, but I’ll be sure to pass on your very helpful complaint about how the storage rooms, that guests aren’t supposed to even be in, are dusty.”