Helena landed just behind Ando with Hana in her arms as the man gripped his staff with all four hands and sliced it down through the air. As it smacked the ground, the cloud above them opened with a crack, and a wall of water that filled the width of the alley cut through the air with such force it sliced through the brick on either side. The woman had been under it, and tried to pull back, but its knife’s edge just pierced her. She screamed as a deep red erupted onto the cobblestones.
From its far side, a glow attempted to emerge and bowed the water wall, but it did not part. Collier released Lorelei, eyes wild, sprinting toward the wall. She watched him run full speed at it, dropping down onto all fours, but he could not pass through, slamming instead into the water and crumpling into a ball on the ground.
“Come. Quick.” Ando’s voice was steady, compelling Lorelei to hurry over to the others where Helena stood at Ando’s side, cradling Hana’s body. The man did not look at her, but once she had reached them, he widened his stance, grabbed the staff with all four hands, and leveled it at the far side of the alley in a single, smooth motion. At that, the water broke, twisting like a spout, taking the form of the woman with it and crashing into the back wall where it exploded.
On the ground in the darkness was the soggy form of the once tall and spindly woman. It lay still, and Ando held his stance, waiting until she moved. When her head turned toward them from the ground, Ando lifted his staff once more. Soaking and weak, the form dragged itself away from the wall to the crumpled creature that was once Collier, now only a red fox. She reached a boney arm out for the creature and laid a hand on its throat just as Ando ripped his staff down through the air again.
A spear of water twisted in the air and sailed down into the woman’s back. With a last shriek in a hundred voices, she and the fox burst into a cloud of black. The cloud scurried away from itself, filling the alley in every direction as it crumbled apart, crawling up the buildings, the dumpsters, and toward them.
Lorelei gasped, squeezing in tight to Helena as she saw hundreds of black spiders scurrying forward. But as they came, they also disappeared in tiny bursts, poofing right out of existence until only one was left. It skittered all the way to where they stood, and Ando promptly squashed it under his shoe.
***
Lorelei offered Helena a stilted goodbye at the front door of Moonlit Shores Manor. The mail carrier had brought Hana to the couch in the sitting room, and with a gracious nod from Ando, left. The return trip from Bexley had been largely silent, Lorelei unsure what to say, and every time she opened her mouth, Helena had given her a look as if to tell her there was nothing that would do.
But the winged woman was gone now, and Ando was striding away through the foyer and into the dining room. Lorelei followed in the darkness of the late night, or perhaps early morning, into the kitchen where Ando was already taking down pans and setting them on the burners, all of his arms working. She watched him for a few moments trying to busy himself, his face betraying nothing, then she gave in to her own never-ending need to fill the silence.
“Who would have guessed Collier Coyote was actually a fox, huh?” She stepped up to the island counters across from where he was working. Actually, it probably made perfect sense to the charmed people of this world.
He only glanced up at her from under his thin brows and then back down.
“I guess the pop world is going to be missing an icon.”
“That wasn’t him,” he said quickly, peeling the skin off of an onion in two of his hands while the other two pulled out a cutting board. “It was an illusion put on by such a low-level servant that I was too blind to see through it, too complacent to notice how dull the magic was.”
She perked up—he talked to her—but when she saw his scowl, withdrew. He was still quite angry. Understandable.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other. He said nothing but began chopping. “Really. I didn’t expect things to go like that, obviously, and I don’t know how she got out of my sight, but—”
“You put Hana at a great risk tonight,” Ando interrupted, pointing the knife at her from across the wide island. She glanced down at its tip, and he returned it to the board, dicing the onion twice as fast.
Lorelei hesitated, the happening in the forest with the lycans on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. That was no excuse for taking a teenager to a seedy bar in the middle of the night. “You’re right.”
He grunted and swept the diced onion into a bowl. “I know I’m right.” He started in on a second one.
“I just felt bad for her,” she said, scratching her head. “She really wanted to see the show, which I thought was real at the time, and you never let her do anything, and—”
Ando stabbed the knife into the board so that it stood straight up. “Did you ever think there was a reason why?”
“Well, yeah…” She swallowed, then let out a breath. “Overprotection. She’s seventeen.” Lorelei suddenly remembered what that was like, being on the verge of adulthood but seemingly unworthy of anyone’s trust, and stood a little straighter. “But if she never gets a chance at doing things on her own now, when she actually does go out into the world, you’re practically throwing her to the wolves.”
Ando’s eyes took on an even angrier scowl—clearly that was a bad choice of words.
“I get it, you love her, but she’s more capable than you give her credit for.”
“Capable?” Ando spread his fingers out on the counter. “She is far too weak to protect herself from what’s out there. You saw what happened,” he said, his words biting. “What you let happen.”
Lorelei crossed her arms. “I knew something was up with Collier, but I just thought he was a sleezeball, and I was prepared to protect her from that. I didn’t think she could end up—” Lorelei stopped abruptly, the word lingering in her mouth. It was too scary and real to say, and she didn’t want to admit it.
“Dead,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, my god.” Her mind reeled. “Hana could have been killed. I really couldn’t protect her from that.”
“No.” Ando was eyeing her, but his face was less angry. “Not many could.”
Lorelei leaned into the counter. “What was that?”
“Evil,” he said, plucking the knife back out of the board and lining up two carrots.
Lorelei still had Hana’s phone, and she pulled it out. She scrolled through the app to the messages from her supposed pen pal, but the conversation was completely gone as was every instance of her anonymous online friend. “They tricked her.”
“Exactly.”
“But her.” Lorelei pressed around on the screen for anything else, but the rest of the app for the real Collier Coyote, who actually was having a surprise show the next day in Tokyo, seemed legit. “This wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t random. They targeted Hana. Why?”
“Hana is special.” The words came out reluctantly with much less force.
“I know.” Lorelei pocketed the phone again. “I’ve seen it. But she doesn’t seem to know. In fact, she doesn’t believe she’s capable of much at all. If that’s not true, and if she’s in danger because of it, don’t you think you should tell her?”
Ando glanced up though his hands never stopped chopping. “No.”
She lolled her head to the side, frustrated. “But that’s where the real danger is, isn’t it? I mean, if she knew something like that was out to get her, she wouldn’t go sneaking out at night. Probably not anyway.”
“These walls are the safest place I know. If she is here, she is safe, and she doesn’t need to know anything more. You don’t understand what has happened, what will happen if she…” Ando paused his chopping once again, eyes tracing over the countertops in thought until he landed on something different. “Though it may seem like the last place we should have come, Moonlit Shores Manor is truly the safest place. Things like the creature that attacked her in the city cannot come here. Only their weak
servants can pass through the wards and try to lure her away. Servants all of them,” he muttered, chopping more furiously. “Serving a false god.”
“It was a fox,” she said quietly. “Ren told me about something attacking a fox in the woods. He said it was a weird magic that did it—that’s why he has the pup.”
Ando said nothing but grunted.
“And Estrid thought we were animals too,” she whispered mostly to herself. “Talked about us breaking through wards and thought we were servants of him. Of a god.” Her head snapped up to Ando who had stopped chopping to look on her as she mumbled. “What do you mean this seems like the last place you should have come?”
“I’ve said too much!” Ando threw up two of his hands. “Go to bed, you’re already up too late.”
He turned away from her to the sink, rinsing his knife. Her heart jumped as she stared at the back of him, and she blurted out, “Is it because of Zyr?”
Ando’s form froze before the running water. He looked out the pitch-dark window into the yard beyond, and the faucet turned itself off. “Where did you hear that name?”
“I came across it in some old documents when I was cleaning out the office,” she lied coolly. “That Collier impersonator called that woman Atax, and her name came up then too.” She hoped the lorelei’s supposed penchant for gossip would fill in the gaps.
He turned back to her and began sweeping the diced vegetables into another bowl. “You would be better off not investigating it further or you’ll end up just like Hana’s parents.” His eyes flicked up to her for only a moment. “Dead.”
“What if I told you I already went back in time and killed Zyr?”
Ando stopped then, the corner of his mouth lifting in uncharacteristic amusement. “You? Killing a god?” He snorted. “I wouldn’t believe it.”
She shifted her weight to the other hip and sighed. “Well, you’d be right. I don’t think he actually died, but I saw him, Ando, and I think he might be…around. Maybe even on the grounds not that long ago.”
“Of course he was here. That’s why my sister is—” Ando slammed the full bowl onto the counter, and the vegetables inside jumped. He took a breath, composing himself. “Zyr cannot be killed. But as long as he does not cross that threshold again, this place is safe.”
They stood on opposite sides of the counter not looking at one another. This was the most she had ever heard Ando speak, and with the most emphasis he’d ever had. “Is Atax one of the four?” she asked, remembering the conversation with Ren. “One of the, what did he call it? Sires of the fae beings from the convergence? It sure looked like you killed her, so why is Zyr special?”
“Where did you hear this?”
“Does it matter?” She stepped forward, grabbing the edge of the counter. “Hana was in a trance or something, and she said to me, This life must be destroyed so he can be made new again. What does that mean? What’s happening?”
Ando clenched a fist and set it gently on the counter. “She said that?” His eyes glistened, but he blinked the look away. “Please,” he said to her then, “she needs more time. Let her be a child for just a little while longer. She deserves that at least. You cannot speak of it. Not to anyone.”
Lorelei stared at him a minute longer, remembering the last late night she’d stood in that kitchen, soaking wet, and keeping a secret with someone. She didn’t want to keep so many secrets, but here she was again, and after what she’d put them both through, perhaps she owed them her silence, at least for a little while. Lorelei nodded stiffly, filled with more questions than ever, and turned to go to bed.
CHAPTER 23
A BAD LOOK
Lorelei was hesitant to leave the manor grounds over the weeks following what had happened in Bexley, but the special exterior acrylic paint she ordered had finally come in to Steadfast Sundries. She fitted Aly with the doggy sweater that Ziah had tailored for her wings and placed her in the basket of the bicycle, setting off for Moonlit Shores. The bite of mid-January was in the air, the days were short, and the ground was frozen hard, but she’d survived a bit longer and managed to keep Hana’s secret, whatever it actually was.
The conversation she and Hana had the morning after the whole mess ran through her mind as she biked down the forest trail toward Moonlit Shores.
The girl had come up to her in the sitting room during lunch. She looked nothing like herself, not smiling or playful and definitely not up to something illicit. Instead, she stood there worrying her hands, dark eyes turned to the ground. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? Some jerk taking advantage of you?” Lorelei had placed her hands firmly on her shoulders. “Screw that. You survived almost getting the soul sucked right out of you!”
“What?” Hana’s mouth twitched, looking up from under her brow.
“You…you remember that right?” Lorelei glanced over her head through to the dining room, no sign of Ando.
Hana put a finger to her lips and moved the bottom one around as she thought. “We went to The Rattler’s Tail, and Collier said he wanted to show me backstage, and then I sort of blacked out. I woke up back here, and Uncle Ando said you brought me home.”
“Me?” Her eyes went wide.
Hana nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “My whole body hurts, but I don’t know why.”
“You don’t remember the alley or Atax or…” She stopped when Hana’s eyes sharpened, blinking like she was coming up on some far-off memory.
Both Ando’s plea and Hana’s strangled words bashed against one another in her head. Let her be a child…This life must be destroyed.
“You tripped, in the alley, and fell on those cobblestones,” Lorelei had told her quickly to pull her out of whatever she was remembering. “Don’t try to think too much about it, you hit your head pretty hard too.”
The girl looked like she wanted to believe her, her chest heaving once with a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have gone. It was stupid.”
“When I was a lot younger than you, I did something way dumber. Everyone does. Not that any of that was your fault, okay?” She squeezed her shoulders. “And just so you know, I looked up the ex-members of Cardinal Direction, and I think Reilly is way cuter.”
At that, Hana had giggled, a whisper of her former self. Still, she had been reticent to speak to anyone since their outing gone wrong, busying herself in the kitchen and shutting herself up in her room every evening. It would take some time getting over, Lorelei realized.
Ando’s words itched at the back of her head though, especially now that Conrad was interested in searching for the deed again. Over the past couple weeks he would find her whenever they both had a few free hours to knock on floorboards in the dining room between meals, thumb through books in the sitting room during quiet hours, flip over mattresses in the guest rooms after cleanings, and if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t want to really ruin his newfound amicability with the thing that had happened. The bruises on her back were almost gone anyway, and she assumed he felt similarly about his own thing, not once bringing up the amber bottle since the day she’d given it to him.
Grier was ever-faithful with the reports of Mr. Carr’s comings and goings too. Mostly, though, they were just sitting arounds. He was a weird guy, Grier told her, but he’d only had one interesting phone call recently, and the words weren’t very clear from the other side of his door. Mr. Carr had been complaining, so it sounded, about a canceled meet up. Instead, he was just going to have to wait to receive something, and he wasn’t happy about it. So far, his tablet had also proved unsnatchable.
Lorelei sped up when they broke out of the forest and hit the road, cleared of snow. Aly spread her wings from her spot in the bicycle’s basket, the wind rustling her mottled, grey feathers. She chittered like when she watched salamanders in the conservatory, and for a second it looked like she almost got air. Lorelei pressed her down a bit more firmly into the basket just to be sure she stayed put.
They came to a stop outside St
eadfast Sundries and Aly hopped onto her shoulder to go inside. The clerk, Constance, was an older witch who loved to fulfill special orders. She showed Lorelei the tubes of paint, five in all, a black, a white, and three primary colors, their wrappers shimmering with an iridescent glow.
“I haven’t seen this brand used yet, so you’ll have to bring me a picture,” she told Lorelei, “but I hear they’re just beautiful and glittery and they last an eternity. Don’t ask how they tested that out, but that’s what they say anyway!” Lorelei promised to show the woman come spring when she could bare to be outside long enough to complete the job, but for now she was just excited to hold paints—magical ones—in her gloved hands. The freightage cart was going to look like new when she was done with it.
She headed back to her bike and Aly hopped into the basket just as a flash of pink from across the street caught Lorelei’s eye. She made the unfortunate decision to glance over and caught the gaze, which quickly shifted into a death glare, of its wearer.
Bridgette stood there just between the post box and the streetlight like it was the most normal thing in the world. It was, of course, but the hair on the back of Lorelei’s neck raised, and not from the simultaneous blast of chilly air that swept down the street between them.
Steamy breath swirled before Bridgette’s mouth like a tiny dragon snuffling in the grass, eyes never leaving Lorelei’s as she stepped off the far sidewalk. Lorelei’s face blanched—she was coming right for her—but she couldn’t will herself to hop on the bike and pedal off; running away suddenly felt dirty and rotten, and as she watched Bridgette walk over with all the cool confidence of a woman who had not admitted to drugging and manipulating her ex, she was at least a little intrigued as to what the witch was about to say.
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 23