The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2)

by A. K. Caggiano

  She held back her excitement. “You like it?”

  He nodded, the smile moving from one side of his mouth to the other. He placed the painting up on the side table so that it was propped against the wall and stood back, admiring it.

  “I was a little worried the shutters were wrong,” she said quietly, tilting her head to look at her work again and seeing every mistake. “I didn’t really get the lighting right in the upper left corner either. And I had to guess what kind of flowers would have been in that box under the window, so I chose daffodils even though—”

  Lorelei felt Conrad’s lips just barely brush against the side of her face. If anything would get her to stop pointing out every flaw in her painting, it was that.

  “It’s perfect,” he said into her ear.

  She squeezed her hands to keep them down at her side and not shooting up to her cheek. It had been such a light touch and happened so fast, she didn’t know if he’d only meant to whisper in her ear, or if Conrad had actually just kissed her, but when she lifted her gaze, the mistletoe was the first thing that she saw. “Well, merry Christmas,” she squeaked, and her whole face went as red as a holly berry.

  “Ghost story time!” Ziah announced with a slur as she collapsed onto the couch. Only the six were left, and she had turned off all of the lights so that only the fireplace lit the room. Lorelei sat on the couch with Conrad and Ziah on either side. Hana curled up on the floor with Aly and the fox, and Grier threw his legs over the side of one of the chairs with Ren in the other. Ziah begged Ren to tell them a scary story, insisting this was an integral part of Christmas.

  “The things that frighten elves are surely different from what the rest of you would be terrified by,” he said, but after more of Ziah’s prodding, he relented and read from a book that had come in the YuleCo box. The drone of his monotonous voice, Lorelei’s belly full of cookies, and the fire’s warmth made her eyelids heavy. She hadn’t felt herself fall asleep, but at some point, Conrad gently shook her awake, and she sat up off of his shoulder.

  “Bedtime,” he said and pointed over at Ziah who had passed out hard on the couch beside her, mouth open and snoring.

  Ren had a sleeping Hana already in his arms, the fox pup balanced in her lap. He gestured down to Ziah. “I will be back for that one.” He started off for the stairs, Grier rubbing his eyes and shuffling behind.

  The record scratched out the last of its somber piano melody as Lorelei got to her feet. There was a glint of something in the front window, and she wandered over to it, scooping up Aly as she went.

  Conrad wandered over beside her. “Hey, it’s snowing.”

  White flecks landed on the front porch, pitch black beyond the light’s glow. Aly snuggled into Lorelei’s arms and purred, and she could feel Conrad’s warm and comforting presence beside her. Snow, the first of the season, and on Christmas Eve, just like magic.

  Then her heart shot up into her throat.

  Snow.

  Blizzard.

  Death.

  Lorelei opened her mouth, ready to tell Conrad everything about the amber bottle and his brother, but when she looked over at him, he was gazing out the window and actually smiling.

  It could wait one more day.

  CHAPTER 20

  TWO DRAGONS, ONE SWORD

  Philomena rolled a tiny, metal ball across the front counter of Moonlit Shores Manor. She’d come down earlier than normal that afternoon to ask after Ziah, and this time she’d hung around. “These darts,” she said to Lorelei, “they’re never going to get finished without her blood.”

  Aly was half asleep, lazily reaching out and trying to swat them away.

  “Do you really need it though?” Lorelei asked, marking down which tasks on Arista’s list had been finished. “I mean, you seem like a really good cupid to me all on your own.” This she at least half meant—Philomena had been top notch at identifying the ingredients in that love potion, it was just some of her decisions that led to questionable outcomes.

  “Well, don’t get me wrong, the darts are already amazing, but I really gotta beat that smug goat herder Nikeros this year.” She snatched up the little ball and held the pointy end toward Lorelei, making her recoil. “These will be ten times more potent with that succubus blood—it’s just the boost they need to make sure my targets actually take action on their affection!”

  Lorelei stepped to the side so that the dart wasn’t so dangerously close and glanced at the oversized clock and its pendulum on the wall. Even though the thing was broken, it was always a good reminder that there were plenty of things to do and not much time to do them in. The Christmas decorations, for one, needed to be taken down and that was going to be difficult if she remained trapped behind the desk with a cupid whining to her, and she didn’t need to add being magically infatuated to the list.

  The stairs creaked then as Mr. Carr started down them, and Lorelei felt a second flare of anxiety. Grier was doing well keeping an eye on him, but they still had no idea what exactly he was up to. The man had been there for weeks, so he either was building quite the case, or he was sure there was something that still needed to be uncovered, and at the very least she wanted him distracted while she tried to figure other things out. Then she had an idea.

  “Actually…are you sure about all that?”

  Philomena gave her a shrewd look.

  “What I mean is, you obviously have an awesome tool there, and when you get Ziah’s blood it’s just going to be a bonus, but you probably need some kind of practice too, right?”

  “I thought you wanted me to stop practicing on people.”

  “I do!” she said quickly. “But no one said anything about reconnaissance. You’ve done all this work on the weapon, but what about the target?”

  Philomena’s eyes took on a sparkly cast as Mr. Carr passed behind her and into the dining room.

  Lorelei leaned in conspiratorially, voice just a whisper. “I think what you need to do is find the loneliest, saddest, utterly gloomiest person in here and study the hell out of them. Interview them, figure out what they’re looking for, what they really like, but don’t use spells or anything, just distract—I mean talk to them. Good, old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground research. That way, when you go to shoot somebody, you know for sure you understand your prey.”

  For a moment it looked like it wasn’t going to work, but then Philomena’s face lit up like she’d been struck by an epiphanous lightning bolt. “You are absolutely right!” She spun around just as Conrad was coming into the foyer inspecting a piece of copper pipe in his hands. “Oh, speak of Hades and he shall appear—I’ll start with him!”

  He froze, looking up at the two.

  “Oh, no, nope, definitely not!” Lorelei skittered around the desk, intercepting the cupid before she could pounce. “I already know exactly who.” She guided her around Conrad and pointed out Mr. Carr in the dining room. “That one, okay? Trust me, he’s perfect.”

  Philomena puffed up her chest and set her sights on the man, strutting toward him. Lorelei turned back to Conrad, grinning. “Two dragons, one sword.” That had to be a saying, she was sure of it.

  But he was looking very confused. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore—technically they never came off the endangered list.” He glanced around her to see where Philomena had gone. “What were you and that cupid talking about?”

  “Oh, um,”—she waved her hands and went back to the desk, not wanting him to ask any questions about Mr. Carr—“she’s just trying to stay busy, it’s nothing. How are the chores coming?” Lorelei held up her copy of Arista’s list.

  Conrad groaned. “I’ve only got about a quarter of it done.”

  Things didn’t often go wrong at the manor, but Arista had found every possible thing she wanted fixed as a sort of punishment for Conrad skipping out on them for so long. He likely didn’t bother explaining to her what happened with Bridgette, and Lorelei wasn’t sure how sympathetic the woman would even be. From Arista’s point of vi
ew, he had just run off, no warning or telling when he’d be back, and left them in the lurch for handiwork.

  “Do you think you can take a break? I have something in my room I need to show you.”

  “In your room?” He hesitated, a tinge of worry tainting his face as if he could tell what she was going to show him wasn’t good. To be fair, it wasn’t. “Right now?”

  She nodded. The amber bottle had practically been burning a hole in her side table, she’d even been having nightmares about the thing, but she’d yet to have a good chance to tell him about it since chickening out on Christmas Eve a few days earlier. “I’ve been wanting to give it to you for a while, but there wasn’t a good time before. I know you’re busy, but I really need to do it soon. Do you have a couple minutes to come upstairs with me?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he looked back at her, unblinking. She didn’t realize she’d made it sound so grave, and tried to lighten things with a smile. Then in one quick movement he dumped the copper pipe on the counter with a thunk making Aly trill at him. “Yup. Definitely. Plenty of time.”

  She grabbed the overnight bell that would tell her if someone new walked through the doors while she was gone, and she led him up both flights of stairs to the staff quarters.

  “I just got out from under the cottage’s crawl space,” Conrad said as they went down the short hall to her bedroom. His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “I was transmuting some of the plumbing so they’d get better hot water downstairs, so I’m pretty gross right now.”

  She looked him over as she unlocked her door. He mostly wore black, so he didn’t seem that dirty, and she didn’t really care if he tracked dust all over the place anyway, she just needed to hand the bottle over. “I’m sure you smell fine,” she joked, going inside and right to the nightstand. “Shut the door behind you.”

  Pulling out the amber bottle was strange. The thing was always lighter than she expected, but it still felt as though it carried something within. Like it were coated on its inside, her fingers couldn’t touch whatever made her so uneasy, but she could sense it from the exterior as they grazed over the marks Bridgette had made into its neck.

  If Bur were back, she would have taken it to her as well, but the faery was still off on her own journey, according to the others. It may have been better, she supposed, as Bur could have spilled the secret Lorelei was human in front of Conrad, and so far that lie was still intact. She took a breath and turned back to him, holding the bottle out.

  Conrad was standing against the door stiffly, eyes tracked on her, but then he squinted. “What’s that?”

  “The thing I need to give you,” she said solemnly, not sure how to go on.

  “Oh.” He dragged out the sound then his shoulders relaxed. He crossed the room, chuckling. “There’s actually a thing.”

  “Of course there’s a thing, what did you think I meant?”

  Conrad’s face changed the moment he took the bottle, unable to answer if he had even heard her question at all. He marveled at it, turning it over in his hands, then spat out, “Where did you get this?”

  Lorelei explained finding it in Byron’s room, then cautiously reminded him of Zyr and how they had bound him in an amber bottle. “With those markings it just has to be the same one. I don’t know how, we thought it was obliterated, but there it is.”

  “You traveled almost four hundred years in a few seconds,” he said. “Whatever was in here should have been destroyed by getting thrown into something like that.”

  “But shouldn’t the bottle have been destroyed too?”

  He grunted, still staring at it, running fingers over the etchings.

  Voice low, Lorelei watched his face. “Bridgette said you designed that binding spell.”

  “Yeah,” he breathed. “Well, sort of.”

  She didn’t suppose she should be surprised, he was always reading some ancient-looking book, hinting that what he was up to wasn’t usually above board. “Do you think your brother found it while he was in the house this fall?”

  His jaw clenched, obviously not wanting to hear that, but it fit together. He looked up at her finally, opening his mouth to tell her something then deciding against it. There, again, always holding back. She wanted to shake whatever it was out of him.

  “Can I have this?” he finally asked.

  “Please, take it.” She held her hands up. “I can barely sleep with it around—it’s literal nightmare fuel.”

  He assessed her a moment then weighed the bottle in his hand. “I have to think about this. A lot.”

  Of course he did. Not talk, think.

  Conrad put the bottle in his satchel and readjusted the strap, shaking his head like he was just removing the last minute’s discussion from it completely. “So.” He took a look at her room as if realizing he was in there for the first time. “Did you also need any handiwork?” He stepped around the foot of the bed toward her desk.

  “No, my pipes are fine.”

  He stopped, glancing back over at her.

  “Last time you came to help me there was that leak, because of Hana, remember?” Her eyes widened as he casually looked over the sketches on her desk. She managed to keep everything else embarrassing, including her underwear, put away, but she forgot about her practice illustrations.

  “What’s this?” He reached for one of the drawings.

  She jumped up on the bed and ran across it to save time, hopping down just in front of him and slamming a hand on the page he was trying to uncover. “Nothing.” In truth, she had no idea what it was, the desk was sort of a mess, but it didn’t matter.

  He cocked his head, smirking. “My spells can bind a god apparently, a changeling should be no problem.”

  Lorelei’s eyes flicked to the bed then back up to him, hopefully too quick for him to notice, but something about how his brow arched told her he saw. She relented just to change the subject, moving the papers. The drawing he grabbed was of flowers with ribbon scrolling through them, a mock-up of what was already on the freightage cart that she intended to touch up. “Oh, these are just plans for a project I want to do when it’s warmer.”

  He looked it over, nodded, and placed it back down. “And what about…”

  As he started to reach over her, she grabbed his arm, holding him still. “Nope, that’s it. We trade one picture for one threat.”

  “That wasn’t a threat, that—”

  She huffed, predicting what was about to come out of his mouth next. “Threat, promise, whatever.”

  When he continued to just look at her, she suddenly wished he would be interested in the illustrations on the desk again. But she could have taken a step back, could have let go of his arm too, but instead remained there, close to him. And then the overnight bell vibrated from her pocket.

  She jumped with a yelp, pulling it out. “Back to work.”

  CHAPTER 21

  CONTEXT CLUES

  Lorelei tried to recount exactly how she ended up at The Rattler’s Tail. It started with the persuasion of a seventeen-year-old, of which very few good things ever came. Hana had knocked, quietly but with rapidity, on her door that night. It was late, and the others were getting ready for bed. The holiday rush had finally ended around the new year, though the changing of the human calendar affected the charmed folk very little—in their opinion it was simply the middle of winter—and exhaustion took most of the staff in the wake of the guests.

  But there Hana had stood, dressed in black—black—and had on the shade of lipstick that she’d let Lorelei borrow for her fateful date with Ziah’s brother, Malachai, one she normally kept buried at the bottom of a drawer. Lorelei knew from the beginning it was all a rather bad sign.

  “I need your help.”

  Lorelei pulled her into her room, every bad thought floating through her mind despite Hana’s mischievous grin. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she whispered, drumming her fingers against one another and looking like Aly spying a liz
ard’s tail. “I just want you to come with me somewhere.”

  Looking at the clock was all she needed to do to reply.

  “I know it’s late, but we’re cutting it close, so we have to leave now.”

  Lorelei certainly wasn’t going anywhere braless and in her paw-printed pajama shorts. She crossed her arms. “Where exactly?”

  “Just this club-type place. It’s in Bexley. Collier Coyote’s doing a secret show there tonight!” She was wiggling around like she was waiting in line for a bathroom.

  “If it’s a secret, then how is anyone supposed to show up?”

  Hana held up her phone, flashing her the screen of the app and her private messages, but only for a second. “These things get around. Plus he told me himself and said he’d put me on the list. I can get you in too, probably, even though he said I should come alone.”

  Lorelei raked her fingers down her face, regretting ever encouraging her to talk to the pop star. Of course that however-old, tattoo-covered, baby-faced musician wanted Hana to show up alone.

  But then Hana had started begging, citing that her uncle would never let her go in a million years—he never let her do anything at all, in fact, and this was her only chance to do anything fun, ever, probably for the rest of her life.

  Lorelei tried to convince her to bring along someone else too, maybe Conrad, but she only stuck out her tongue and said he would complain the whole time which was painfully accurate. Then when she suggested Ziah, Hana said she was too old.

  “Please don’t ever tell that to her.”

  “I don’t mean it like it’s bad,” said Hana with a sigh. “I love Ziah, but she sort of acts like a mom, and that’s okay, but not tonight. Tonight, I need a big sister to come with me. That’s you, Lore. Please?”

  Lorelei twisted up her lips and snorted. With that, she’d gotten her, and she’d gotten her good. The girl couldn’t know about the opportunity Lorelei hated missing out on in the life she’d abandoned, but magic did, and sometimes magic gave its users the tools to get what they wanted without even letting them know it had done it. Hana wielded the pseudo-wrench like a professional, and so as a responsible adult and stand-in sibling, Lorelei sneaked out into the night with her. They headed to Bexley on the advisement of what she increasingly felt like was a predator, but at least if they were together, nothing bad would happen.