Entangled Secrets, page 11
“I—I haven’t found the heart of the article yet.” Lionel went on without seeming to notice her embarrassment. “I’m thinking, it’s not so much about poverty as about people who are hungry. I’m not talking about just a hunger for food. I’m talking about people who lack things they crave: a safe place to sleep, love, family… and the hunger for destructive things like drugs. Hunger drives and destroys lives. It sucks people dry.” His voice became quieter, self-reflective and shadowed with despair. “If I hadn’t found the goth and the Northern Circle, I’m not sure what I wouldn’t have done to satisfy my hunger to be close to magic. I was—I feel obsessed sometimes.”
Fear rushed through Chandler. Her magic. His obsession. That explained why he was attracted to her. She shrank away from him, covering her panic with a laugh. “Not sure what you wouldn’t do? Like make a deal with a demon—or perhaps hook up with a witch?”
Lionel grabbed her shoulders, a firm grip. “Don’t even joke about that. My obsession might have led me to the coven. But that’s not why I’m standing here. It’s not why I asked you out for dinner or made the dragon.”
The force of the conviction in his voice replaced her fear with regret. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
His grip gentled. His gaze locked on hers and his voice went husky. “I like you, Chandler. I want to know you better.”
He released her shoulders and gently swept his fingers along her jawline. Her breath faltered. She raised her hand and tentatively touched his lips. Plush. Warm.
His lips parted, waiting for her to say “yes” to the question glistening in his eyes. Would she let this go further? Would she kiss him?
She moistened her lips and tilted her head back—
“I got it!” Peregrine’s voice sounded in the distance.
Chandler stepped away from Lionel just as Peregrine winged into sight, running full tilt across the parking lot toward them.
She gave Lionel an apologetic grimace, then explained, “He saw the black dog’s footprint. Now he’s determined to get a photograph of the dog.”
Peregrine reached them. He glanced at Lionel. “You got here just in time. This is going to be fun.”
He held out the camera contraption for them to see, a MacGyvered combination of boxlike game camera and PVC pipe all bound together with what looked like a mile of camo-colored duct tape.
Lionel crouched to get a closer look. “How does it work?”
Peregrine gleefully thrust the device into Lionel’s hands. Then he pointed at its various parts and explained how the flour grenade and firing mechanism were already inside the pipe. How the motion sensor would set them off and cause the invisible dog to get covered in flour just as the camera snapped a photo.
“Where are you going to set it up?” Lionel asked.
“I wanna tape it to the tree.” Peregrine flagged his hand at the maple directly across the walkway from the dragon. He pulled a roll of duct tape from his hip pocket. “Brooklyn gave me this to use.”
Lionel looked up at Chandler. “Do you mind if we cover your tree with duct tape?”
“Be my guest.” A laugh burbled up inside her. “I have more tape in the workshop if you need it.”
Lionel winked at her. “If we need more, I’ll let you know.”
Peregrine let out a falcon screech and ran to the tree. As he began to explain to Lionel how the dog would return to pee on the dragon, Chandler decided to leave them alone and get drinks for everyone. When she returned, Peregrine was holding the camera in place while Lionel struggled to wrap tape around the tree.
Smothering a laugh, she dropped down on the steps and popped open a beer. For a minute, she listened to Peregrine give Lionel instructions. Then she moved on to admiring Lionel’s butt when he shifted positions. He did have a nice butt, more muscular than bony.
Lionel glanced over his shoulder and grinned at her.
She blushed, embarrassed to have been caught staring.
“I hope that other beer is mine.” He nodded at the unopened Switchback on the step beside her.
She smiled. “I brought juice too, if you prefer.”
“Hmm… you decide.” A spark brightened his eyes. “I’m just glad to be here.”
As he went back to work, Chandler took a deeper, longer sip of her beer. Dear Gods and Goddesses, of fire, earth, water, and air. This felt too easy. Too perfect and right. Lionel was great with Peregrine. Peregrine seemed to like him. She liked Lionel too.
But in less than a half hour, they’d be in the main house discussing the reversal with Devlin. Tomorrow it would happen. It might take Lionel a few days to recover. But after that, all his ties to the Circle and the witching world would have to be severed. It would be part of a promise that Lionel would need to make. A deal that she’d have to stand behind as a high priestess speaking for the welfare of her coven.
She couldn’t surrender to her and Lionel’s attraction—to their hungers, as Lionel would probably call it. It made no sense to let anything grow between them. For his sake. For her sake—and for Peregrine’s emotional well-being.
Chapter 13
The ink was made from galls,
harvested centuries ago from the Charter Oak.
The needle was forged from meteor steel.
The art was my creation: Dragons for protection. Monkeys for cleverness.
—Jon Sebastian. Tattoo mage. Savoy, Massachusetts
Once Lionel finished helping set up the camera, Chandler went with him to the main house to meet with Devlin.
The three of them discussed what Lionel remembered from Rhianna’s original spell and a general outline of what the reversal would entail. She also talked Lionel into sharing the story about the ferryboat and him being a foundling. Devlin agreed the story was strange. But the fact that Lionel didn’t have magic in his blood also made it insignificant, at least as far as the reversal went. As the conversation continued, Chandler silently asked Athena for the strength to ignore her attraction to Lionel and instead approach the situation as an unbiased high priestess.
Still, as the meeting neared its conclusion without the necessary subject of Lionel’s promise to stay silent and sever all ties with them coming up, Chandler decided to not point it out. Instead she agreed to meet again with Devlin at the teahouse first thing in the morning to go over the last-minute details. Then she used Peregrine as an excuse to duck out of the meeting.
But instead of going home, she took Peregrine to play with Em’s kittens in the greenhouse. She figured it was smarter to stay out of sight until she was certain Lionel was gone for the evening. He wasn’t the only one who needed space and time to think things through.
“You look beat,” Devlin said the next morning when Chandler straggled into the teahouse. The crisp air on the walk from her apartment had helped clear her head. Still, she was grateful to see there were coals already glowing in the brazier.
“I didn’t sleep very well.” She tugged off her sweater jacket and hung it up. “Thanks for starting the fire. The heat feels really nice.”
“No problem. It gave me time to think about the reversal some more.”
“That’s what kept me awake, along with dreaming about black dogs.” She didn’t mention Lionel, Evan Lewis, and the dragons from her vision, though they all had played a part in her tossing and turning.
Devlin took a teapot from the brazier and set it on the low table. “I wish Lionel could have filled in more of the blanks for us. If anything sends this reversal sideways, it’ll be the details he and Brooklyn forgot.”
Chandler took two teacups from the storage cupboard. “Maybe we should come up with a different idea?”
Devlin shrugged. “We could create a likeness of Lionel out of beeswax. His hair, fingernails, and blood would be perfect for a taglock, since Rhianna used them in her original spell.”
Chandler thought for a second. It was a good suggestion. Rhianna’s spell could be transferred into the beeswax poppet. The taglock would form what amounted to a magical umbilical cord between him and the beeswax likeness, allowing Lionel to function normally while the spell slowly dissipated from the wax figure. But there was a problem.
“That might fix the issue Lionel’s having with getting his thoughts out. But what if something happens to the poppet before the spell dissipates?”
“You mean, what if the fae get their hands on it?”
“If the faeries didn’t already know that Lionel has acquired the sight, the black dog knows now—and he’s no normal dog. The fae could use the poppet to kill or blind Lionel—or worse.” As she set the teacups on the low table, another possibility occurred to her. “There’s one person who would remember the entire spell: Rhianna.”
Devlin laughed. “Are you kidding?”
“Yeah, it was stupid to even suggest that.” Dux had used his demonic machine to create a diamond out of Rhianna’s body parts and trap her spirit, like he’d done with Athena and Saille. But Rhianna’s diamond was most likely in the hands of the High Council. Besides, a sociopath like Rhianna would never feel obliged to help Lionel, even if she’d caused his troubles.
Devlin sat down at the table on a floor cushion. “We should stick with the reversal. We just have to be prepared to act fast if something goes wrong.”
Chandler settled down across the table from him. She reached for the teapot. “The whole idea of Rhianna’s spell giving Lionel the sight is strange. He’s not a witch. He’s not a shifter or demon or even a cambion. I get that his brain was affected. But I have a hard time believing there isn’t something else going on, especially if you consider his weird childhood.” She sighed. “Lionel is special—I like him.”
Devlin nodded heavily. “I’m sorry, Chandler. I like him too.”
Puzzled, she replayed his answer in her mind. “What do you mean, I’m sorry?”
His expression hardened. “The coven’s risked a lot by being as open as we have with him—a man who for all practical purposes remains a threat to the witching world’s anonymity. Opening ourselves up to him was the morally right thing to do. But it is a violation the Council won’t overlook if it leaks out. We need to make sure what Lionel’s learned doesn’t go any further.”
Dread stole over Chandler. “Are you talking about Lionel’s promise and Gar’s suggestion about severing all ties? I was wondering why you didn’t bring up those points to him last night.”
“Once Lionel’s had time to recover from the reversal, we’ll need to remove his memories of everything that happened over the last month. It’s the only fail-safe solution.”
“What are you saying?” Her head whirled from the implications.
“I was talking with Gar. He mentioned a spell for the treatment of PTSD that my grandfather Zeus has been involved with. It’s an experimental forgetting spell designed to pinpoint and eliminate specific memories. It wouldn’t leave Lionel’s brain muddled like Rhianna’s spell did. It’s not like the Council’s amnesia spell that wipes out a person’s entire memory and carries the risk of someone reverting to an infantile state…”
Every ounce of energy drained from Chandler. She heard Devlin stumble on, arguing a point he clearly would rather not have had to make. She saw the sympathy in his eyes. And she understood in her heart that Devlin was right. Lionel not remembering them would be best for everyone. It would wind back time to before he’d become a threat to the witching world, especially when combined with him leaving town.
“. . . it sucks,” Devlin said. “You deserve to be happy.”
Chandler wiped her hands over her face, then gazed past Devlin toward the glow of the brazier. This would have been easier before she’d almost kissed Lionel. Before he’d helped Peregrine with the camera. Before the baby sand dragon. Before he threw himself over them in the alley, before she’d touched his hand that first time and felt his kind energy.
“I’m really sorry.” Devlin nudged a full teacup across the table toward her. “It’s chamomile. It’ll help.”
She faked a smile and channeled her inner high priestess. “How I feel or don’t feel about Lionel is beside the point. We need to keep the High Council off our backs. It’s not like forgetting us will hurt Lionel. It’ll keep him safe.”
Her chest squeezed, a sharp ache branching outward until every cell in her body trembled from its power. It felt like the red dragon on her chest was retreating from her skin and clawing its way into the hollow cage of her ribs. It was like the day her dad died and her mother withdrew, leaving behind an icy whisper in her head: I’ll always be alone, always cast aside. Deserted.
There was another issue as well. Zeus’s experimental forgetting spell might make Lionel forget the Northern Circle and everything he’d experienced with them. It would no doubt take away the faery sight that Rhianna’s spell had caused. But Lionel’s hunger to be close to magic would remain. He’d always felt that, long before he met them.
Devlin agreed to let Chandler tell Lionel privately about the forgetting spell before they performed the reversal. But as the hours ticked by and morning turned to early afternoon, she became more and more sickened by the idea of what had to be said and done.
Still, when three o’clock came and she heard the grumble of his VW, she hurried across her workshop to waylay him before he could head for the main house.
“Hey!” She waved from her front steps, signaling for him to come over.
He retrieved a backpack and something that resembled a saucepan lid from his car. With the pack slung over his shoulder and the mystery item in one hand, he hurried toward her, avoiding the sand dragon and camera-grenade launcher.
She nodded at his pack. “Does that mean you’ve decided to stay at the complex?”
He shrugged. “Devlin called again to offer. He said there are plenty of guest rooms in the main house.”
A knot formed in her throat. She didn’t doubt that Devlin had worked extra hard this time to make the rooms sound appealing. With Lionel staying here, it would be easier to transition into doing the forgetting spell.
She faked a laugh. “More like an entire floor of extra rooms.”
“Um—I hate to admit it, but I am worried about how I will feel after the reversal.”
“Well, knowing you’ll be here makes me feel better,” she said. The knot in her throat tightened.
His smile broadened and he held out the mysterious lid-shaped thing to her. “I hope you can use these.”
She took it, only then realizing what it was. A coil of wire. And not just a single gauge of wire or one variety. It was a mixture, all neatly bundled together. “Wow. Thanks.”
“Will it work?” he asked.
She frowned, unsure what he meant. For the most part, her thoughts were focused on what she needed to tell him.
“For the monkey’s heart.”
Her breath stalled. Of course, the arteries and veins. Struck speechless, she let her magic reach out, sensing the composition of the coiled wires: brass, steel, and what was likely a steel-fiber bronze.
“Harp strings,” Lionel answered her question before she could ask. “A man at the motel is a harpist. He busks downtown.”
She could only stare at him, her entire body numb except for her heart, thundering loud and insistent. She’d had passing relationships with artists who had sketched and painted her likeness in oils and with pencils and pastels, who’d created silver jewelry to decorate her fingers and ears, and goblets out of glass for her to drink from. But this man—this man with a blazing creative fire who claimed to not be an artist—offered her gifts that touched her soul where the others had left her cold.
Before she could stop herself, Chandler wrapped her arms around Lionel in a grateful hug. “They’re perfect.”
His arms enveloped her, warm and surprisingly strong. “I’m glad.”
“It’s more than that. I love that you even thought to give them to me.” Her already wild heart thumped even more insanely as she pressed her breasts against his chest, moving the hug past a friendly gesture to say she was open to more—even more than the kiss that had almost happened yesterday. Perhaps not right at that very moment in her doorway, with a backpack slung over his shoulder and a coil of wire in her hand. But she couldn’t bear the thought of never kissing him like a lover, of not ever being with him, at least once before they wiped her from his mind and he walked away.
His hand brushed up her spine, lingering on the back of her neck. He murmured, “You—you’re amazing. Your soul. Your heart.”
“Lionel,” she said, breathless. “I need to—”
She closed her eyes. She had to tell him about the forgetting spell. It wasn’t fair to let him think this heat between them could lead anywhere beyond the briefest fling. She’d offered—no—she’d insisted on being the one to tell him. Devlin had said he’d do it if she didn’t want to. But she’d wanted to. She had to. But she longed to feel Lionel’s lips against hers, to caress his chest and long legs, to feel the heat of his body against her.
She stepped back, out of the embrace.
He smiled. “Um—I should go. Devlin is waiting to show me the guest room.”
“Yeah. I guess.” She gritted her teeth, readying to tell him. Instead she said, “Peregrine’s with Devlin. I hope you don’t mind if he helps with the reversal. With the sight coming on, it’s time he become more actively involved in the adult aspects of the coven.”
Lionel touched her chin, nudging her face upward until their gazes met. “Peregrine is a remarkable boy. If I ever have a child, I hope he—or she—is like him.” He stopped talking, waiting expectantly for a response.
“Remarkable,” she parroted his word. But that wasn’t what she needed to say. She opened her mouth. She closed it.
Lionel’s brow wrinkled with concern. “What’s wrong?”
