Pack Bound, page 19
‘Why are you standing in the doorway? Come in. You’re letting in a draught.’
Skye took a faltering step forward, then another. Ferris closed the door at her back with a quiet snip.
‘Ferris, ask Cook to prepare tea and a plate of those lemon biscuits she baked for River.’
Ferris bowed and said, ‘As you wish, madame.’ He turned away, his face serious, but as he passed Skye, he winked and smiled. She smiled back even though it was the last thing she felt like. The stress of the last twenty-four hours was starting to be felt in aching muscles and a sense of doom. But she didn’t want Ferris to know there was anything wrong. She didn’t want to worry him.
When he disappeared through the door to the back of the house, Skye faced her grandmother. ‘You’ve been avoiding me. Why?’
‘That’s no way to greet your beloved grandmother.’ Morrigan held out her hands in an imperious gesture. Skye wanted to ignore the silent command, but as always, obligation and duty made her stumble forward.
Morrigan greeted her in the French way, a kiss to either cheek, her lips barely touching Skye’s skin. Skye breathed in the scents of Morrigan’s favourite Chanel No 5 perfume and the sweet scent of the roses that lingered on Morrigan’s hands. Her grandmother had obviously been in the rose garden Grandpa had planted for her to pick and then arrange the flowers in vases herself, a ritual left over from the days when Harrison Cantrae had been alive and insisted on the splashes of colour they brought to the otherwise stark white palette of the house.
That scent on Morrigan made Skye’s chest ache with the thought of all she’d lost and all she was about to lose when she heard the truth of her past. She swallowed hard as she stepped back, forcing a smile to her mouth. ‘Hello, Gran.’
Morrigan’s lips twitched, obviously annoyed at Skye’s less than respectful tone. But she didn’t reprimand her, she just stepped aside. ‘Come into the drawing room. There’s much to discuss.’
The fear Skye had been fighting rose up to swamp her. She needed to do something normal; find some calm in this sea of nauseating turmoil. ‘I’d like to see River.’
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea right now.’ Morrigan paused and clasped her hands together, concern furrowing her brow. ‘Your brother had another episode.’
Skye gritted her teeth. ‘Why didn’t you let me know?’
‘It only happened this morning, about an hour or so ago. And quite frankly, my dear, we were too busy dealing with him to think of giving you a call. You can be so egocentric sometimes. It astonishes me.’
Despite the harsh words, there was uncertainty and fear flickering in her grandmother’s eyes, her face pale under her perfect make-up. Skye’s eyes narrowed. ‘You never want me to see him when he’s had an episode. Is it because he’s Were and you’re afraid he’ll change in front of me and I’ll remember everything you took from me?’
Morrigan reeled back as if she’d been hit. ‘Where did you hear that word?’ she whispered in a voice so full of terror it made Skye tremble.
‘So, it’s true what they told me?’
‘Who? Who told you?’
‘Jason McVale and his brother, Adam.’
Morrigan glanced at the front door, her lips trembling. ‘They’ve found you? What did they say?’
‘They said I was their … Pack Witch? They need me to use my powers to change a curse and save them.’
‘No.’ Morrigan shook her head. ‘The Curse shouldn’t have been triggered. You’re safe. There would be no reason for it to activate.’
‘Well, Jason said it has. He told me I was the only one who could break it—right before he turned into a wolf in front of me.’ She shivered. ‘It was terrifying.’
Morrigan turned away for a moment, her brow furrowed in thought. ‘When did this happen?’
‘This morning.’
Morrigan closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. ‘That would explain what happened to River. He must have felt your terror and acted out.’
‘Gran. Morrigan!’ Skye grabbed her grandmother. ‘Are you telling me something is wrong with the blocking spell? That River can feel me through the twin bond again?’
‘Yes. That’s precisely what I’m saying. Something has changed in the spell ever since you came back from the snow.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘When did you meet Jason McVale?’
‘At the snow.’
Morrigan blew out a breath. ‘Well, that would explain the change.’
Skye, shoulders tensed, said, ‘Explain what? Grandpa said—’
‘Your grandpa?’ Morrigan looked around her, eyes wide. ‘Is he here?’
‘I am. Although, it’s difficult to come through even though the spell isn’t working right.’
‘Harrison!’ Morrigan sobbed. ‘Oh, Harrison, thank the Goddess you’re back.’
Skye’s head spun. ‘You can hear him?’
Morrigan turned back to face her, green eyes steely. ‘I am a descendent of one of the most powerful witches ever known, and while my magics never truly manifested—a fact I was never allowed to forget because it made me useless to the pack—I could always commune with the dead.’ She clasped her hands against quivering lips. ‘Thank the Goddess, you’ve come back to me, Harrison.’
‘He hasn’t come back to you. He’s come back to me. To help me and River. They said my power being blocked is hurting my twin. Is that true?’’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘Nothing ever is,’ Skye whispered, the words bitter drops on her tongue. ‘Are you going to tell me the truth?’
Morrigan glanced up the stairs. ‘Do you love your brother?’
Skye’s eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of question is that?’
‘The most important kind.’ Morrigan pursed her lips, eyes sparking, waiting for Skye’s response.
Skye stared back at her, hands clenching against the tingling burn, shoulders stiff. ‘He’s the most important thing in my life.’
Morrigan seemed to sag for a moment, as if all the breath had left her. ‘Good. I will tell you the truth, but first there’s someone you have to meet.’
Skye didn’t like her tone. ‘Who?’
‘He is the reason I’ve been avoiding you in the last few days. I was trying to track him down because I knew, if what I feared had actually come to pass, we would need his help. And if the McVales have found you, I’m certain my fears aren’t without foundation.’
Skye’s skin crawled with a strange prescience. Her gaze darted to the drawing room’s closed door. ‘Who is here, Gran?’
‘A warlock your grandpa and I used to know.’
‘Alfrere? Alfrere is here? Why? Have they found us?’
Skye watched, astonished, as Morrigan wrung her hands, her gaze darting back towards the front door. ‘I think so. I think they’ve been following Skye.’
Skye jerked, shook her head. ‘No. You were having me followed.’
‘I haven’t. I swear I haven’t. It’s our old rogue coven. They’ve tracked you down. They want to use you. But we should be safe here for now. Alfrere’s invoking a spell of protection around the house as we speak.’ She turned back to Skye. ‘He’s here to help. You must come in and meet him.’ Morrigan held out her hand.
Skye looked down at that hand as if each red-tipped nail was dipped in poison.
‘A warlock? You want me to be in the same room as a warlock?’ She jabbed her finger towards the door, and as she did, blue flame sparked out of it, arcing across the space to hit the wall next to the door with a ripping, tearing sound. The burst of magic left a scorch mark on the pale antique wallpaper.
Skye stood stock still, gaping at the scorch mark, arm still stretched, finger pointing, blue fire enveloping the tip.
And while she stood there, shocked to the bone, an expression crossed Morrigan’s face that Skye had never seen before—worry. Genuine worry. For her.
‘I was right,’ Morrigan whispered, staring at the scorch mark. Then, shaking her head, she lifted her chin and gestured to Skye, ‘Come, Skye. You need to meet Alfrere. Your grandpa will come with you too, won’t you, Harrison?’
‘I will.’
Skye hesitated.
‘You need our help. This is bigger than what Jason McVale led you to believe. There’s much he doesn’t know.’ She put out her hand.
Shaking and unsteady on her feet, Skye reached out and took Morrigan’s hand. Her grandmother guided her into the lounge room and over to the fireplace where a man stood, watching her with kind concern in his light grey eyes. His once dark hair was liberally sprinkled with grey. He was tall and perhaps had been well built when younger, but had grown softer with age, a slight paunch showing under his impeccable blue wool three-piece suit. He had a firm mouth and jaw and was still handsome in a Robert Redford, life-lived kind of way.
‘Alfrere!’
‘Harrison? Is that you?’
‘In the flesh.’ A chuckle. ‘Well, not so much flesh. But I’m here as much as I can be, although it’s not easy. I have trouble staying for long.’
‘Of course. The blocking spell. It’s remarkable you’re able to manifest yourself at all. I always said you were a strong one.’
‘Not as strong as our Skye.’
Alfrere turned, his gaze arrowing in on Skye, grey eyes assessing.
‘Skye. This is my old friend, Alfrere Juneau. Alfrere, this is Skye.’
Skye eyed him warily, feeling a bit like Alice when she walked through the looking glass into another world. ‘Why isn’t the spell going ballistic? If he’s a warlock, shouldn’t there be a screech of warning in my head?’
‘Alfrere helped us when we needed it most. Knowing one day we might need his help again, we excluded his essence from the spell.’
Skye shook her head, unable to comprehend what they said. It was impossible. Warlocks were dangerous. He was dangerous—she could feel the power of him like a thousand bugs crawling over her skin. And yet here he stood, in Morrigan’s house, an invited guest.
‘You can trust him. He helped us save you and River.’
Her grandpa’s voice, a warm puff next to her ear, didn’t allay her fear. Instead, his words made her psyche fracture a little more.
‘I know this is difficult, love. But you can trust him. He helped us then. He’ll help us now.’
Off-kilter, she took a few steps back, licks of flame sparking on her fingertips again. Her heart thumped in her chest, the flight instinct screaming at her to run.
Alfrere looked down at her fingers. In a voice strident with power and a hint of France, he said, ‘A fire witch. And more. I can sense all four elements. Marvellous.’
Morrigan didn’t comment as she looked in Skye’s eyes, then said, ‘Breathe. Let the cool replace the fire.’
Skye nodded and desperately tried to do what Morrigan asked, wincing as her head began to pound; the repression spell making itself known. The heat in her fingertips lessened as she breathed past the fear and panic in her chest and imagined ice enveloping her skin.
‘Good, that’s good,’ Morrigan said after a few minutes. Gaze still on Skye, she spoke to Alfrere. ‘Can you help her?’
‘That depends on how close the rogue coven are and how damaged the spell is. I can see it’s not working the way you told me it should.’
‘The McVales are here. Their presence might be part of the reason the spell has faltered.’
He nodded. ‘And led the rogue coven right to her door, no doubt. Typical animals— blundering about with no thought to how their actions affect others. I suppose they tracked her to stop the Curse?’
Morrigan gasped. ‘You knew that was a possibility?’
He flicked his hand at her. ‘A small one, and nothing we need to worry about.’
Skye glanced between them. ‘Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’
Alfrere regarded her with serious eyes. ‘Years ago, your grandmother ran away from the pack she was bound to, to find freedom. She found it when she met your grandfather and me and joined the rogue coven we were a part of. They believed, as did she, that the Pact that had bound witches and warlocks to the Were hundreds of years ago had become a bond of slavery. This coven, made up of those who hadn’t pledged themselves to the Pact, tried to start life anew. As the years went by, we were joined by those who developed powers, and sometimes, though rarely, we were joined by one of the pledged, who had come to realise, as we did, that their magics shouldn’t be taken from them and given to the animals.’
He looked at Morrigan, whose lips were pulled tight over her mouth, her hands clenched tight in front of her.
There was a knock on the door and Ferris entered. ‘Where would you like the tea served, madame?’
‘On the coffee table will be fine. We’ll serve ourselves. Thank you.’
‘Very well, madame.’
‘Perhaps we should all sit,’ Alfrere suggested as Ferris left and Morrigan served the tea.
Skye shook her head when Morrigan offered her a cup and took a seat opposite them on the couch. She took a deep, shuddering breath and clenched her hands together, willing the heat that threatened away from her fingertips. ‘Can you tell me the rest?’ she asked of her grandmother. ‘I— It’s hard to listen to his voice.’
Morrigan handed Alfrere a cup, sipped at her tea and crossed her long, elegant legs. After a moment, she put her cup down on the table between them and placed her perfectly manicured hands in her lap. ‘Very well.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I was away from the pack I’d grown up around, part of a strong new coven who didn’t care that my magics weren’t strong enough to feed into them. Their leader, a very powerful witch, was friendly and welcoming and made me feel special and wanted in ways I’d never experienced growing up. It was liberating. But that wasn’t the only reason I felt happy for the first time in my life.’ A small smile lit her lips as her gaze flickered to the left of Skye. ‘I’d fallen in love with Harrison.’
‘As I fell in love with you.’
‘Yes.’ The smile flickered, faded. ‘But then I became pregnant, and things changed.’
Her gaze darted to Alfrere and then back to Skye. ‘We found out that the leader had lured me there on purpose with plans to kidnap my sister. But now I was pregnant, her plans changed. She could use me and my baby, rather than me and my sister, to help break the Pact tying the old covens to the Were.’ She shook her head, a vicious expression uncurling on her face.
‘I could not allow my child to be used by them. I returned to my family to have the child and keep him safe. Harrison stayed away and started the rumour that I’d had a miscarriage and we’d broken up from the grief of the loss. We hoped this would convince the rogue coven to forget about me. But it wasn’t enough.’
She closed her eyes, a tear trickling down her cheek. ‘I gave birth to my son, Paul, and told my sister what had happened. She agreed to keep my baby safe, facilitated my disappearance with Harrison and faked my death. Without me, the rogue coven’s plans were dust in the wind—they needed the power of two tied by blood to further their plans. It almost killed me to leave my son, but I had no other choice.’ She stopped, looked away, blinking rapidly. ‘Harrison never even met his son.’
‘Is that true, Grandpa?’
‘Yes. To my never-ending sorrow.’
Skye’s heart twisted at the pain in his voice.
Morrigan looked down at her hands. ‘Harrison and I ran and hid, starting new lives. Alfrere helped us in whatever way he could.’
‘How?’
‘He stayed with the rogue coven as a spy. It was extremely dangerous, but he did it anyway, for us.’
Morrigan nodded at Harrison’s whispered words and sent Alfrere a look that brought a thick sensation to Skye’s throat. ‘We can never repay Alfrere for what he did for us. He helped us to hide and he fed us information. But sometimes his information was not enough. We only found out after the fact that the rogue coven had attempted to kidnap my sister Iris in an attempt to lure me out of hiding. She was killed in the fight to take her.’ She shifted in her seat, making a small, sniffing sound, then cleared her throat. ‘Thankfully Paul was guarded on Packland and the rogue coven couldn’t get to him. But he did find out about the plot to kidnap you and your brother.’
‘What?’ She didn’t think she could be any more shocked than she was, but she’d been wrong. ‘Somebody tried to kidnap us?’
Her grandmother nodded stiffly. ‘Somehow, they’d found out about your birth. I didn’t even know I had grandchildren because I’d cut off contact entirely, so fearful was I of bringing danger to my precious Paul. But when Alfrere came to us and told us our old coven planned to kidnap my grandchildren and use them instead of me in their plots, I realised all those years in hiding, staying away from my precious Paul, had been in vain.’
She paused, a sob clear in her voice, her knuckles white as she clenched them in her lap. ‘We tried to warn Paul and your mother, Ivy. We arranged a meeting. But somehow, the rogue coven found out. They ambushed your parents on the way to the meeting. By the time we got there, the coven had already struck, killing your parents. They were about to take you too, but we got there in time and took you away.’
She met Skye’s stunned gaze. ‘We ran and hid again, not even contacting Alfrere. We didn’t want to endanger him further.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Your grandfather came from money and he’d hidden much of it away in untraceable accounts, so we had the means we needed to take us anywhere and live comfortably and quietly. But even with all our precautions, we couldn’t seem to stay hidden. Your magic, it was so wild, and as yet untrained. To anyone with power, you were too easy to find. We ran, started new lives with new names a number of times before we realised what we had to do to keep you and River safe.’
Skye shook her head, realisation a nasty, rising sickness. ‘So you trapped my magic and made me afraid of it.’
Morrigan swallowed as she nodded, her voice thick with tears as she said, ‘We had no choice but to make you believe your power was evil. You were too young to understand the danger and do what was necessary, and even though your grandpa was powerful in his own right, he wasn’t strong enough to keep you hidden by himself.’ She looked down at her hands, her voice a harsh whisper. ‘And I couldn’t help him because I wasn’t strong enough. I’d never been strong enough.’
