And there was also the tiny problem of the very weird, very misplaced, but very incessant guilt Lorelei had about the whole thing.
“Hey.” Bridgette crossed her arms and took a sip of her hot cup of Moondoe’s. Fitting.
“Um, hi?”
Aly growled from the basket and laid her ears flat.
“Oh, you too, huh?” She rolled her eyes at the winged cat then settled her face back on Lorelei, smirking. “So, like, congratulations or whatever.”
“Bridgette, I didn’t—”
“Ugh, spare me.” She held up a flat palm. “I do not want to hear about how you didn’t rat me out because you give a crap about Conrad’s poor little fee-fees or whatevs. Take the win like a real woman, you earned it. I actually came over here to say thanks anyway.”
Lorelei balked. Of course the witch would want to save face, but this—this was weird. “Thanks?”
“I was, like, totally bored with him, he’s not even my type, and it was just so. Much. Work.” She bounced her head to the side with each word. “Seriously, sis, good luck dating him because that guy has problems.”
“Is it really so hard to believe I told him everything for his own good and not just because I have feelings for him?” Lorelei heard the words come out like someone else said them then covered her mouth as if she could lock them back up into the deepest recess of her brain. Somewhere magic cackled and Lorelei thought she heard a disembodied voice say, I knew it!
Bridgette scoffed, then raised her brows, the thought bouncing around for a moment until she shrugged like it was hardly worth dwelling on. “Well, whatever, be all noble and miss out on how vulnerable he probably is right now, your loss. I’m just glad you got me a way out. I’m, like, so, so, so much better off now.” She was really laying it on thick.
“You already had a way out. I know he dumped you, so why didn’t you just leave things at that?”
She sighed, pulling out her phone from her back pocket and making a face as she texted back whoever had just sent her a message. “Yeah, that was a nice break for, like, a week, but you wouldn’t understand.”
Lorelei crossed her arms. “I can guess it had something to do with the manor and wanting a piece of it.”
“Oh, please, as if I’m the one who ever cared about that musty old place.” She tapped again on her phone, each time her thumb pressing a little harder. “And it’s all pointless now. In fact, I get to go on a fun, little vacay to someplace warm with my newfound freedom.” She jiggled the bag over her shoulder. “Leaving tonight.”
Lorelei scowled, but then a new thought occurred to her: Philomena had hinted that Bridgette’s actions were odd, different than someone who was trying to ensnare the heart of someone else. She’d dosed herself with the same components like she had to be convinced to go along with everything, with a plan that might not have really been her own. And if there were someone else coordinating the whole ordeal, and she’d ultimately failed, what she was calling a vacation might actually be a euphemism for something worse.
The source of Lorelei’s guilt had a pinprick of light shined upon it, and she tried to casually lean on the pole she’d set her bike against. “Hey, since you’re, ya know, cool talking about it and stuff, why did you go to the trouble of dosing yourself too?”
Bridgette ran her tongue over her teeth then smirked. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” Lorelei said, lowering her voice and looking at her hard. Bridgette broke the eye contact as her phone buzzed in her hand again. “I just believe you when you say you don’t care about the manor. But I bet your dad, like, super cares.”
Bridgette’s eyes flashed up at her from under spidery lashes, apparently not finding her mockery amusing. She bared her teeth, then her grimace twisted into a smile. “You think you have it all figured out, huh? Like it’s so complicated. But I doubt telling you that I was just doing what I had to would really change your opinion. And I also doubt lorelei are held to the same standards witches are, so again, you’re never going to get it.”
Lorelei clicked her tongue. “You charmed folk really need to sort out this blood superiority thing. It’s—what would you call it? A bad look?”
Bridgette scrunched up her nose. “No, this is a bad look.” She gestured to all of her, then took a sip of her coffee as if she hadn’t just insulted her entire being.
The two stood glowering at one another on the sidewalk, the cold, stagnant air not nearly as frosty as what they were shooting at one another. A fishing boat bell rang in the distance, and a lone seagull passed overhead. Then Lorelei warmed, if only the slightest bit, and uncrossed her arms. “For whatever it’s worth, I regret busting in like that.”
“Which time?”
She winced, the image of the two of them on the bed both grossing her out and filling her with a kind of jealousy she wasn’t ready to admit. “Both times. And, if it matters to you, I’m sorry you felt like you had to do what you did. That doesn’t make it okay,”—she added quickly—“it was horrible and disgusting and wrong, but if you were also under some kind of manipulation too, then that…sucks.”
Bridgette swept her eyes over the space between the two. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Well.” Lorelei gave Aly a pat, and she was broken of her unblinking, half-pounce stare at the witch. “It’s cold, and you said you were going somewhere?”
“Right.” She smiled in that way that was only technically a smile because her mouth was turned up.
Lorelei mounted the bicycle. “I guess I’ll see you around.” She knocked up the kickstand.
“Hey.” Bridgette’s voice was lower, different enough to make Lorelei drop both her feet onto the sidewalk instead of just pedaling away. She was chewing her bottom lip, and Lorelei waited, knowing something odd was coming. “I know you think I’m a monster or whatever, but I meant what I said: he really was only happy when he was all high on the desideratae. When he was around me anyway.”
Well, that might have had something to do with it, Lorelei thought. “If you’re about to offer me a recipe or something, I do not want it.”
“Ugh, as if. You’d probably screw it up and kill him anyway. What I’m trying to explain is, like, I did sort of date the guy on and off for three years, so it’s not like I hate him or anything, he’s just not my flavor of frappuccino.”
Lorelei rolled her eyes—anything for another dig at him. “I don’t see what’s so bad about—”
“Just listen!” Bridgette squeaked, then composed herself. “I mean, like, Conrad was just easier to be around when he was happy. Not just for me to be around him, but for himself to be around him, ya know?”
Lorelei looked at her for a long minute. She thought about telling Bridgette that Conrad wasn’t as miserable as she’d insisted he was all the time, that he laughed and was kind and thoughtful when he was away from her, but she knew that wasn’t really the point.
“I’m just saying I sort of did it for him too.” Bridgette’s phone buzzed again, and she growled, rolling her eyes. “Ugh, I gotta take this. See ya, like, never, sis.” She scrunched up her nose and held the phone to her face, putting on a perkier voice as she turned and walked away, “Hi, Daddy. Yeah, it’s sent out, and I’m just on my way to the station now.”
Lorelei watched her walk off, her friendly but forced, high tone flitting off with the breeze. The conversation sat strangely on her shoulders as she biked back to the manor. Bridgette was certainly terrible in a way that was wholly unique. At least saying something like sorry, even though Bridgette deserved none of it, had made Lorelei feel a bit better. The point was, it was out, and now she needed to try and let go of it completely. And if she was lucky, she’d never see her again.
Luck, though, would have nothing to do with it.
CHAPTER 24
SOMEBODY’S BEDROOM
Of course Moonlit Shores Manor had an attic, and of course it was dark and creepy. The stairway to it was narrow, turning halfway up and leading to another door at its top. Con
rad unlocked it and went in first, and Lorelei followed.
Conrad had held up the key when he propositioned her to go, a dangerous and excitable glint to his eye that she couldn’t possibly turn down. The key was different from the ones that unlocked their bedrooms, thinner and elongated with a more delicate head and white like a bone—not one that had been bleached in the sun, but what a bone might actually look like when freed from all the squishy things that kept it inside a body. He wouldn’t say how he got a hold of the manor’s skeleton key, but the only time they could use it would be in the middle of the night, and Lorelei assumed that meant it was because Arista wouldn’t notice it missing if she was asleep.
With a click, Conrad lit up the room by pulling on a chain overhead that would have been too high for Lorelei to reach. An old bulb struggled to shine its yellowed light over boxes and furniture stacked against the walls, but the room only went on for a short distance, rather small in relation to the size of the manor as a whole.
“At least it’s not storming this time,” Lorelei said, nudging a box marked Lost & Found with her foot.
They both waited for a crack of thunder, but there was only the low moan of wind against the roof. Conrad pocketed the key and put his hands on his hips. “There’s not much to go through. Should make the deed easier to find if it’s here. Shall we?”
She nodded and started on the crates near the door. They were full of jars, empty and less dusty than everything else, and she only had to look over them quickly to know there was no paperwork amongst them. Beside was an old dresser, the edges worn by time and use, and the drawers slid out stiffly as she searched, mostly empty save for a bauble here and there, a hairbrush, a single shoe, a broken pair of glasses. Behind it she found a piece of tattered paper, but on closer inspection it was just a warranty that expired in the 1980s. Compared to the basement and Conrad’s parents’ house, the things here were positively mundane.
Conrad cleared his throat from the room’s opposite side. “So, how are things?”
She glanced over her shoulder and almost laughed at how forced his attempt at being casual was. He was moving a box to get at the one beneath it, his eyes on her and then shifting away when she looked. “Oh, great,” she said. “Your aunt yelled at me just once this week, and I think she only did it because she wanted to and not because I actually messed anything up, so I consider that a win.” She certainly wasn’t going to mention the run-in with Bridgette a few days earlier.
“Yeah, she’s been on edge and exhausted from the wards, not that it changes her personality that much.” He sighed. “How’s your sleep?”
“Um, okay? Why?”
“You said it wasn’t good before. Something about nightmares.”
She realized he was alluding to the amber bottle without actually mentioning it. “Oh, right. My dreams have been pretty standard lately.” She wasn’t going to define what standard had become, increasingly pleasant and sometimes downright indecent dependent upon how much time they spent together. “Are you sleeping okay?”
He made a noise that should have been noncommittal, but told her everything she needed to know.
“You should put it in another room,” she said a little quieter.
“I know.” He had found a stack of paperwork, but paused going through it. “I feel like they aren’t just bad dreams though. Like they’re telling me something that’s going to happen.”
She lifted her head from the drawer she was going through, holding her breath. Divination magic was a thing, and what that bottle could do, she had no idea.
“But that’s probably stupid.” He sighed, chuckling at himself. “I mean, you’re sitting right there and not eaten by a giant spider, so obviously I’m not having premonitions.”
“Shit.”
He looked like he might already know what she was going to say. “What happened?”
She hemmed and hawed while the look he gave her progressed from curiosity to frustration, then Lorelei gestured wildly with a t-shirt she’d found crumpled in a drawer. “Okay, so this totally crazy thing happened with Hana a few weeks ago in Bexley. I wasn’t the target, just an unfortunate bystander, but there was a spider involved, and I know you’re going to say why didn’t you tell me? Which, by the way, is hypocritical, so don’t. But Ando asked me to keep it a secret. Plus someone always shows up while we’re searching for the deed, so we’re never really alone.”
“Well,”—he gestured to the small attic room—“we’re alone now.”
She swallowed, listening to the quiet, then turned away so she didn’t have to look at him while she explained everything that happened from the moment Hana knocked on her door to the conversation she’d had with Ando in the kitchen. Her guilt boiled over as she went through a box, focusing on its useless contents as she circled back and stressed how stupid she’d been for facilitating Hana going at all. “I mean, that Collier guy? Even if he hadn’t been some shapeshifting, evil servant of a false god or whatever Ando called him, would have just been some sleazy predator going after a starstruck teenager, and that’s just as bad.” She grimaced. “Maybe even worse.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Lorelei flinched. She hadn’t heard him cross the room, but he was standing right behind her. She looked up at him from her spot on the ground. “No, trust me, boys like that are the worst.”
“Not that.” He knelt down beside her. “You’re telling me an animal was enchanted well enough to look and speak and act like a sapient being that targeted Hana, of all people, tried to kill her right in the middle of Bexley, and was then completely destroyed by Ando. Ando, the chef.”
“When you say it like that…” She scratched her head and looked back down into the box, a handful of warped vinyl records left inside. “It was intense, but maybe my normal meter for this sort of thing is off. I know it’s weird, but Hana’s not just a—well, I don’t know what she is at all, but she’s not just anything. It was like that spider woman was trying to eat her soul or something. And I practically let it happen.”
“You said that fox construct pinned you against a wall.” He was trying to make her look at him, but she avoided his eyes. “Lorelei, you could have died too.”
“Well, I got away. I kneed him in the crotch.” She half grinned.
He didn’t grin back. “You have to stop kicking things.” He grabbed her wrists and held her hands up in front of her face. “You need to start using these.”
She balled her hands into fists. “Oh, I punched him too, but I don’t have a lot of upper body strength.”
“You’re a lorelei,” he said as if she should have known, but truthfully she’d forgotten the lie for a second. “Fae beings are powerful, but you’re not using it. I’ve heard changelings have a lot of trouble tapping into what’s inside them, and if you can’t figure it out, that’s okay, but this world is dangerous. If you can’t protect yourself, just don’t go anywhere without me. Please.” His grip on her wrists tightened, his brows knitting, then he released her. “Or without someone else, like Ziah. I saw her trap a guy in a ring of fire once.” He got up then and went back to his side of the room to search, mumbling, “I think she used to be a nether assassin or something.”
Lorelei’s heart was beating fast. She looked down at her hands and could still feel the warmth of his on her skin. She imagined conjuring water in her palms and it slipping uselessly out between her fingers. Short of learning some stage magic, she’d never even be able to do that.
Conrad started asking her more questions about what Ando had said, and as they continued to search, the two tried to piece together what they knew about Zyr, Atax, and the amber bottle from Byron’s room. They were all related if Lorelei’s intuition about their voices was correct, but if Ando destroyed Atax then either he was vastly stronger than any of them could even understand, or it was something else entirely.
They worked their way around opposite sides of the room, but there was very little to go through and met at the back where a
huge armoire sat against the wall, the last piece to investigate. They each grabbed a door and tugged, the piece old and sturdy. The inside was filled with garment bags and coats, smelling musty and old, but no boxes, no paperwork, and not even a shelf at the top to hide anything upon.
Defeated, Lorelei took one of the coats down, a brilliantly turquoise piece even under the terrible lighting, and held it up. It was meant to be floor length, but for someone even smaller than she was with violet embroidery along the lapels and gold buttons made to look like eyes. “Somebody around here had style.”
Conrad raised an eyebrow at her, then his face changed as he looked back into the armoire. He reached in, pushing the clothes to the side to reveal the back, dark-stained wood and the slightest sliver of light running straight down the center.
He pushed against the back panel, and it swung open. The yellow light from the tiny attic space just illuminated the entry into a whole new room that glowed with its own silvery light.
“I know I shouldn’t be surprised,” Lorelei said, “but I really am.”
Conrad stepped up into the armoire to go through.
“Wait!” She grabbed him. “It looks like somebody’s bedroom.”
There were windows on either side of the long room beyond the armoire, moonlight streaming in to illuminate the typical trappings of one of the guest rooms if spread out a bit more sparsely in the large, open space.
“We’re living in a B&B—it’s all somebody’s bedroom.” He climbed the rest of the way through.
Lorelei clicked her tongue, but smirked at the back of him, following and hopping down the short drop to the floor on the other side.
The rest of the attic spread out before them. Where they stood was dimly lit in yellow from the light behind, and the far end was enveloped in complete darkness. The roof angled inward on either side, but there was plenty of room down the center to walk upright, and there were cubbies on both walls where the dormer windows jutted out straight from the pitched roof.
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 24