“Oh, you’re really suffering, huh?” Conrad leaned casually to the side and picked up a small trash bin, taking his time to offer it to her.
She grabbed it and spit the candy out along with a long trail of fluorescent blue saliva. Her tongue hung out, and she could just see the tip of it, dyed violet and pulsing. “Ugh, dat waz tewwible.”
“Mr. Rognvaldson?” Benjamin Abara was standing behind his desk, a hand extended toward Conrad. He was just under five feet tall with proper dress shoes, which he was certainly wearing to go with his very proper suit and vest, a well-fitting, chocolate brown outfit, the white of his undershirt crisp and bright against his much darker skin. Mr. Abara’s bald head reflected back the office lights, and his grey-speckled beard was cut very close to a boxy chin. Beside him, a thick file folder encompassed in a yellow light was just floating down onto the desk.
Conrad took his hand, standing, anxiety crawling back into his face.
“Nice to see you again,” said Mr. Abara, his smile full of bright, white teeth. “Not that you’d remember the first time, you were so young you were just learning to walk. Could cast though, that was for sure. And, Mrs. Rognvaldson?”
Mr. Abara released Conrad and extended a hand to Lorelei who still held the waste basket in her lap. She glanced up to his lined and expectant face. “Who, me?” Lorelei was pretty good at pretending to be something she wasn’t, but of all things, Mrs. Rognvaldson was absolutely not what she was expecting to be called.
CHAPTER 13
HONEY
Conrad lifted the trash bin out of Lorelei’s lax hands. “You okay, honey?”
Her stomach lurched in a way she couldn’t place on the scale of how dare you to catch me, I’m about to swoon, then she blinked up at Conrad who was grinning with too many teeth, practically pleading with her to go along with it.
“Yes…dear.” She rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and managed to smile, taking the attorney’s hand.
Mr. Abara gave her a soft shake and finally took his seat. “Now, last wills and testaments, yes?” He spread stubby fingers over the stacks of paperwork on his desk, each askew in a unique way. Lorelei stared down Conrad who did his best to focus all of his attention wholly on Mr. Abara. She didn’t have any sort of charmed abilities, but she thought if she tried hard enough, she might be able to bore a hole through the side of his face or at least telepathically ask him what the hell was going on.
But the warlock just cleared his throat and spoke to the attorney. “That’s what we talked about on the phone.”
Mr. Abara slipped open a drawer and pulled out some more papers. “Well, you two really have things cut out for you what with Mr. Rognvaldson’s parents’ wills being executed here.” He flipped open the file folder, licked his fingertips, and thumbed through the stack. “Affects change, of course, but at least we have a basis for all the paperwork. Smart, you two being so young, going about this now before you start multiplying. Unless?”
Lorelei bit her cheek when she saw Conrad’s pale face go the slightest shade of pink. She smirked. “Actually, that’s why we’re here.” She rubbed her belly. Revenge had never come so fast and absolute.
“Well!” Mr. Abara beamed back at the two of them. “That’s four generations of Rognvaldsons through that door!” He pointed back at the way they’d come.
Conrad’s jaw had gone slack. She reached out and tapped his chin to close it. “Still shocks him, like he didn’t have biology in school or something.”
Lorelei giggled along with Mr. Abara, and Conrad went an even more pleasing shade of red. “Anyway,” the warlock growled, “I was actually hoping you could help me, er, us get all the documents together. I don’t…I may have misplaced some things. You wouldn’t happen to have the account information and perhaps, I don’t know, the deeds up there, would you?”
“Do I?” Mr. Abara raised furry brows, his forehead crinkles tripling. “Sir, you absolutely know I do. Just give me a good couple minutes, and you’ll be swimming in papers.” He stood and went back to the ladder, starting upward once again.
When he had climbed well up over their heads and his satisfied rambling about his paperwork collection trailed off, Lorelei looked over at Conrad with her own, well-how-do-you-like-that smirk.
“What are you doing?” he whispered harshly from the back of his throat.
“Me?” She leaned toward him, whispering back. “You’re the one who told him we were married.”
“I panicked, okay?” Conrad screwed up his face, and he spoke quickly, eyes flicking back to the ladder. “I called him and didn’t want to say the deed was lost, so instead I told him I wanted to draw up my will, and he asked if I was bringing my wife, and I thought, well, that’s pretty presumptuous, but then it just sort of came out of my mouth that I would before I realized I don’t actually have one of those.”
“You could have at least warned me!”
“Well, yeah, but then you wouldn’t have come.” He looked at her like it was obvious, but she just shook her head, confused. “It’s your biggest fear, being somebody’s wife, right? I mean, you ran out on your own wedding.”
“That’s not—I’m fine with—you don’t even know anything about that!”
The ladder creaked, and they both glanced at it, but Mr. Abara was still far off in the vastness of the forever-high ceiling.
“I know enough to not warn you,” he said. “Look, just don’t stack on more stuff. Lies need to be simple so you can easily remember them. We’re married, you took my name, we’re one of those disgustingly happy couples that don’t really exist. That’s it, simple.”
“You think happy couples don’t exist?” She frowned, her anger forgotten for a moment.
Conrad squinted, thinking. “Well, I guess, but—that’s not what we’re talking about. Trust me about this lying thing, okay?”
She snorted—well, that made all the anger come right back. “No, lies need to be detailed so they’re believable. Like, I wouldn’t have taken your name, it’s way too many syllables. Also, what would you have done if I didn’t—” She gasped. “Oh, my god, am I your backup wife?”
He held his hands out. “What in the nether does that mean?”
“You were going to bring Bridgette here,” she hissed, pointing at him, nose scrunched up and annoyed. “But she broke up with you before the appointment, didn’t she? That’s why you said I had to come with you. Oh, you’re such a jerk.”
“I set this appointment up after we split, actually.” He was scowling at her, working to keep his voice low. “And not that you asked, but I’m the one who broke up with her this time anyway, smart-ass.” He sat back, arms crossed, then eyed her. “Why would you even be upset about being a backup, imaginary wife anyway?”
“I’m not upset, Conrad,” she spat, sitting back herself and wondering the very same thing.
“Yes, you are,” he leaned forward again, grinning this time. His voice slowed, the exasperation rinsed out of it and replaced with amusement. “Your face is all pink, and you just said my name that way you do when you’re irritated with me. You’re mad because you thought I didn’t pick you.”
Flustered, she swallowed and watched the ladder bend, willing Mr. Abara to get down it quicker than her face could shift to a deeper shade of embarrassment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she tried and failed to casually lilt.
“Calm down, honey,” he said, leaning very close to her. “All this stress can’t be good for the baby.”
She snorted at him again. “Very funny. Now it’s twins.”
“Here they all are.” Mr. Abara had another manila folder floating beside him in a pleasant yellow glow as he descended to the floor, and the two put on wide smiles—the kind a disgustingly happy couple might wear—before he turned around. The folder landed on the table, significantly thicker than the first, and he flicked through the pages. “Lots here, copies of the marriage certificate, residency paperwork, and woo, look at this thing.” He pul
led out a thick stack that had to have been a couple hundred pages all clamped together. “I remember copying this myself! Your parents sure went through a lot to—”
“Sure, yeah, they were something all right.” Conrad sat up straight and put his hands on the table. “But do you have the deeds in there by chance? Specifically, the one for Moonlit Shores Manor?”
“Deeds?” Mr. Abara flicked through a few more pages. “Ah, deeds! Of course, right here, alphabetized under R for really about land and buildings.”
At that, Lorelei sat up straight too, all the annoyance and embarrassment flowing right out of her. Conrad could call her his grandmother if that’s what it took to get their hands on the deed, though admittedly she preferred the current set up.
The attorney handed a single page over to the warlock, and Conrad almost didn’t take it. It was pristine looking, certainly not hundreds of years old, and just too simple. Finally, he reached for it, and Lorelei leaned all the way over the arm of her chair to lean on his shoulder to see.
It was a single page with few words on it, Deed in bold, script letters at the top, elaborate scrolling down along the sides and the corners, and the word Duplicate in fat, red letters littered all over. She deflated right there. “It’s a copy.”
“Well, of course,” said Mr. Abara with a titter. “The original would never leave that place. Too enchanted. Too…clingy. It might do a walkabout, it certainly came here to the office for half a day to be copied, but that piece of paper—I remember that one. That deed would find its way back right where it belonged every time—that’s how those enchantments work.”
Conrad looked up from the copy, and Lorelei looked at him. His face sharpened as if he remembered something important. “How enchanted?”
“The deed itself was standard paperwork, modifiable by the proper authorities, but that manor, well, that’s different.” The man leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “That place isn’t any ordinary building, isn’t even any extraordinary building. Extra-extra ordinary you might call it. Sort of wants to own itself. We had to write up a special clause for that.”
Conrad tipped his head down. “Where?”
Mr. Abara flipped through the papers again, pulling out a copy of Conrad’s father’s will. He ran his fingers across it, highlighting a few lines in a yellow glow before handing it over to Conrad. “That’s a lot of legalese, but it comes down to your parents. See, the manor does what it wants—not that I have to tell you that! But if you want it to go to somebody else, you have to convince it. Not too difficult, not with the enchantment your grandfather put on the place to give it to your father and then to, well, to you after the accident.” He reined in his voice. “I am sorry about that, Mr. Rognvaldson. It was just terrible to hear.”
Conrad nodded like he’d been told the same thing a hundred times before.
“But, see, that building, it didn’t want to go to Mrs. Pierce, so we had to write that in special, that she’d act as an intermediary for a time.”
“So, you modified the deed itself,” Conrad said. “You can do that?”
“Like I said, anyone with the authority and the owner’s permission can.” He pulled out from his vest pocket a cylinder like the one Lorelei had seen Mayor Blackburn use to officiate the manor’s business license. “So, if you two have a couple more kiddos after this one,”—he pointed to Lorelei’s flat stomach—“you could split the ownership between them equally which is what I tried convincing the other Rognvaldsons to do, but, well, guess it didn’t really matter.”
“It was only left to one of them?” Lorelei asked.
“There was a disagreement,” the attorney said, turning toward her. “The original paperwork named the older boy when he was the only child, then it was amended organically to add your husband when he came along as a second inheritor if anything happened to the first son. The enchantment on the deed is archaic, stays in the hands of the first male heir unless amended.” He chuckled. “Very silly stuff, but it would have only taken a few extra lines to divide the ownership between the two, that just required both of his parents to come down to the office which is usually very low on anyone’s list of priorities when they’re so young.”
“Should have been higher,” Conrad mumbled, eyes trailing over the copy of his father’s will.
“They did eventually show up, a few years later, but I was surprised with what Mr. Rognvaldson actually wanted—to cut the other boy out. Mrs. Rognvaldson was against it, of course, and they ended up not amending a thing that day. That was a very long hour and a half of my life, let me tell you, the two of them sitting right where you two are, fighting it out to end up agreeing on nothing. So, the deed wasn’t changed, and then, well, you know what happened.”
Conrad passed him back the copies. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Abara.” He stood.
“Oh, well, of course. But didn’t you want to—”
“Actually, my wife’s not feeling very well, so I’ll give you a call to reschedule.” He looked hard at Lorelei. “Morn—uh, afternoon sickness, right?”
Lorelei’s eyes pinged back and forth between the men. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure you don’t feel well,” he said through grit teeth, motioning for her to get up.
She furrowed her brow, standing slowly. “Okay, I guess I could use a snack or whatever.”
“Well, by all means.” Mr. Abara waved a hand, and the door to the office opened.
She kept both hands on her stomach as they went into the hall, bending back to make it protrude and slowing their exit. “Thank you so much, Mr. Abara,” she said turning back to him with a smile. “It was so nice to meet you, you were really helpful.”
“Come on, honey.” Conrad snaked an arm around her waist in the doorway, the word losing all of its endearment as he tugged at her.
“Isn’t there anything else you wanted to ask, dear?” She looked up at him, eyes wide, trying to give him one last chance.
“Nope, let’s go get you that coffee you wanted.”
She clicked her tongue. “You know too much caffeine isn’t good for the babies.”
“Babies, right. I’ll call you, Mr. Abara.” He gave the man a short wave and yanked Lorelei out of the doorway.
By the time his office door shut, Conrad had pulled her down a full flight of stairs to the landing outside a different attorney’s office. “Hey, wait a second.” She followed after him when he let her go, but he didn’t stop until they were back on the first level.
A small flock of pigeons scattered in a flurry of green and blue wings as they opened the door onto the street and were hit by frosty air.
She grabbed the sleeve of his coat as he tried to hurry back the way they had come. “Conrad, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
He looked back at her, brow heavy, then it softened. He rubbed his face, and his shoulders slumped. “I’ll explain it, let’s just go somewhere more private.”
Nowhere in Bexley was really private, but the park was at least open enough to avoid other people. They walked to it fast but in silence, and Conrad picked out a bench under a tree that had lost all of its leaves set far off the sidewalk. They sat next to each other, hands in pockets and collars turned up against the cold, and Lorelei waited until he was ready to talk.
“Byron was seven when I was born,” he began, voice flat. “He hated me right away, told me I was a mistake, and always insisted our parents didn’t really want me.” He told her so stoically, she wasn’t sure if he was making a joke or not, but then he looked up at the branches above them, thoughtful. “He was probably half right, that they only wanted one kid at first, but Byron didn’t have the spark, so they had to try again.”
Lorelei gaped at him—that was the last thing she expected him to say. If Byron didn’t have a spark, then how—how—did he do so much magic? “But he…with the stake…and all the lights…that was magic, wasn’t it?”
“All of that is new.” Conrad lifted a hand and dropped it again. “The spark us
ually shows up pretty early in kids. It can be tested, drawn out, all to quell charmed folk’s fears. But Byron never…he just wasn’t.”
“He was like Seamus?”
“Right. Only Seamus’s family was a lot nicer about it.”
Lorelei’s chest began to sink. “So, they wanted to leave everything to you instead because you could do magic and Byron couldn’t?”
“My father did, but not just because of that.” Conrad bit his lip, puzzling out the words. “I sort of understood what was going on, that he was treated differently because of it, and I told Byron I wanted to help him. Not that a five-year-old can really do anything, but I thought I could back then. And since I was willing, Byron said he found a way, and he did…something sort of bad. It didn’t work, but it did piss off my parents to the point that our father told him he was going to send him away. Mom wouldn’t allow it, but after that things were different, and three years later they changed for good.”
Lorelei looked out at the grassy park, the figures bundled up, arm in arm, strolling along so casually. How anyone could be having a nice day at that moment, she had no idea.
“Maybe,” he started to say, staring at his boots, “if I had convinced them it was my idea then Dad wouldn’t have gotten so mad. Or if I—”
“Hey.” She twisted toward him and leaned in. “That’s not your fault. None of it is your fault. You were just a little kid.”
“Yeah, but so was he.”
“But Conrad—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He cleared his throat, hands still shoved into coat pockets. “We should probably go back. It’s getting cold.”
Like that, she knew he was done talking. She nodded, but neither of them moved from the bench, his words hanging too heavily over them.
A pigeon landed and rooted around in the grass at their feet, and Lorelei watched it hollowly, then she blinked and cocked her head.
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 14