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Damn, Scott was a good kisser.
If only she hadn’t ruined the whole thing, she might know how well he did other things with his mouth too, Cecily thought bitterly to herself as she sat on the back steps with a steaming cup of coffee beside her and a tennis ball in her hand.
She chucked the tennis ball out into the yard, Rhia ran after it.
She’d been so relieved to be kissing him—like gulping down fresh air after swimming from a great depth. And just like a gasp of air to a flame, his lips had triggered an explosion under her skin.
And his as well, she’d thought.
His fingers had wound into her hair and her arms snaked around him. They’d pulled each other close until she’d felt his heart pounding against her ribs.
They’d turned together until she was above him and he was hiking her shirt up over her back, carefully pulling it away from her healing side. Even in the frenzy, he’d been thinking of her wellbeing—caring for her. She’d stopped kissing him long enough to pull her shirt over her head and throw it into the darkness without any care where it landed. Then she’d kissed him again, and his hands were on her skin, on her breasts, squeezing her hips, pressing her down against him.
She could still feel the way the stiffness at his hips ground against her.
The next thing she’d known, he was turning. She’d squeaked with delight as he’d flipped her onto her back. He’d dragged his mouth down her neck, her shoulder, between her breasts while he held them in his hands, his breath hard and fast, like hers. Then he’d gone lower, down her belly.
It had been then, as he’d hooked his fingers into the waistband of her shorts, that a thought shot across her mind:
Trevor.
Her eyes had filled with tears.
And Scott must have sensed it.
He’d looked up her body. “Cecily?”
She’d shaken her head, shaking the traitorous feeling away. She hadn’t been sad—she didn’t regret what they were doing. She’d wanted this for months—longer! “Keep going.”
He’d begun crawling back up her body. “Have you been with anybody since...?”
She’d shaken her head again. “No, but it doesn’t matter. It’s okay—”
She hadn’t even been able to get the words out before she slapped her hands over her face and a sob choked up her throat.
It wasn’t that she missed him. It wasn’t that she’d wished Trevor had been there.
In fact, it had been the opposite.
She’d been so happy to be kissing Scott. So happy for the physical connection.
And for one split second, that happiness and physicality had sent her back in time. Last-night-Cecily hadn’t been the one crying—it had been year-ago-Cecily, still raw from Trevor’s death who had been sobbing on Scott’s bed.
And he’d known it.
“Oh, Ceelee,” he’d breathed as he’d crawled up the mattress, pulling the covers behind him. He’d covered them, laid beside her and gathered her into his arms. She’d stopped crying within minutes.
“God, I’m so sor—”
But he’d cut her off. “If you’re about to say you’re sorry, stop.”
He’d brought his hand to the side of her face, his thumb stroking her cheek. “I think I’ve wanted to kiss you since last Christmas.”
She’d felt herself smile. “At least that long.”
He’d kissed her, short and soft and lingering.
“I need to talk to him,” she’d said, knowing Scott would know the “him” she was referring to.
Speaking of which, Cecily thought as she pushed herself up from the step, she might as well get it over with. She crossed the patio and met Rhia in the grass where she held her hand out for the ball currently between Rhia’s teeth.
“Good morning.”
Right on cue, Trey appeared beside her.
“Isn’t it crazy early?” he asked. “Not that I have a good sense of time anymore, but it looks really early.”
“It’s pretty early, yeah,” Cecily confirmed. Rhia placed the ball into her hand; she chucked it out into the yard and turned to him.
“Uh oh,” Trey said. “I know that face. What’s up?”
Cecily tried for a laugh, but it fell short. She watched Rhia scoop the tennis ball into her mouth. She dropped it on the ground again, put her paw on it and spun it away from herself, only to catch it again.
It was almost like she knew Cecily needed to have this conversation without multitasking. She watched her instead of looking at Trevor so she didn’t have to see his reaction. “I almost hooked up with Scott last night.”
No response. Fearing the worst, she turned and looked to Trey again.
Much to her surprise, he was smiling. His brows were raised high above his brown eyes, his mouth hanging open a little even while he grinned in what appeared to be disbelief.
“Rock on,” he finally said. “How was it?”
Cecily felt her brows furrow and her lips turn into a sneer. “How was it?” she repeated. “I just told you I almost slept with somebody for the first time since... us—and you ask me how it was?”
Trey’s shrug was sharp. “What else am I supposed to say? You’re crazy about the guy, whether you’ll admit it to yourself or not. So, yeah, I’m glad you hooked up with him—or almost did. Whatever that means.”
Cecily just stared at him: her first love.
Hell, she still loved him.
“You’re not upset?”
Trey sighed, his demeanor softening. “No. Of course not. I love you—I’ll always love you. I’ll be here as long as you want me—”
“I’ll always want you.”
He smiled. “Then I’ll always be here. But I won’t ever stand in the way of you loving someone new.”
“Doesn’t it hurt you?” she countered. “Won’t it hurt watching me with someone when you’re stuck, never moving forward?” It wasn’t that she wanted to hurt him, but, she was ashamed to admit, part of her was stung that it didn’t seem to bother him at all.
She hadn’t expected him to be mad. She just... hadn’t expected this either.
He shook his head. “I’m not stuck—it doesn’t feel that way. And, it’s probably impossible to explain, but there is nothing in me that feels jealousy, or envy on this side. I can admire things, but I don’t want for them, if that makes sense.”
He’d said things like that before. And, he was right—while she understood the words, she knew she couldn’t fully grasp what that must be like.
Hearing him say it made her healing heart sting, though. Even while she wished it didn’t.
“I can remember what it was like to be together, and I can love you. And I can...” he thought for a moment. “I can even miss it, what it was like being together, to a degree, but I don’t want for it.”
The sting sharpened, like twisting a knife.
“You don’t want us back?” she challenged.
He shook his head. “Not like that. And I don’t think you do either—not really.”
She felt her eyes go wide. “Every day. I miss you every day, even while you’re here. I can’t believe you’re telling me you wouldn’t take what we had if you could have it again.”
“That’s not what I’m saying—”
“That is what you’re saying!” she shot back. “Jesus, Trey. I still love you. I still think about all of the things we were going to have together. The awesome life we’d planned. And, yeah, I want all of it—it was ours, and sometimes I’m so fucking mad I don’t get to have any of it—”
“Ceelee.”
Cecily wheeled around to find Scott standing on the back steps. He was barefoot, with a pair of sweats hanging low on his hips. When he lifted his arm to rub his messy hair, she could see a sliver of his flat stomach under the hem of his white t-shirt.
“Just talking to Trey,” she said.
“I gathered.”
Her heart shuttered in her chest. “How much did you hear?”
She had to ask because she realized, with startling clarity, that as much as she loved Trevor, the thought of hurting Scott was worse. The need to fix his pain more immediate than the need to fix any she might have imparted on Trey.
He took the couple of stairs down from the door. “Just that you love Trey, and you’re pissed about losing everything you had with him.”
She felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. When those words came out of Scott’s mouth, they hurt her like the tables were turned and she could feel his pain.
“Ceelee, I’m fine,” he said, like he could see the pain on her face. “I only came outside when it seemed like you were mad. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. Go talk to Trevor.”
But when she turned to look at Trey, he was gone.
God, this was a mess. All she’d wanted to do was talk to Trevor about Scott—and now she’d burned them both in the process.
She looked to Scott again. “He’s gone. It’s not that I—”
“You don’t have to explain,” he said cutting her off, though his tone didn’t sound angry.
Which was confusing. Shouldn’t he be angry?
“But I want to—”
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HOUSE!”
Scott’s expression matched the shock ringing in Cecily’s head.
That had been Zander’s voice, shrill and screaming.
Scott turned on his heels and Cecily followed as he threw open the back door to the sound of Callum’s counter.
“You’re telling me to leave.” His scoff was laced in acidic disbelief. “I should be kicking your ass out!”
It was like walking into a dog fighting ring. Zander and Callum were squared off at one another; the air crackled with a freezing kind of anger that Cecily could swear hung tangible in the air, cold against her skin.
“Excuse me?” Zander spat as Cecily rounded the corner into the living room, close on Scott’s heels. “For what? Telling the truth?!”
Callum looked like the wind had been knocked out of him. “I never thought I’d say this, but fuck you, Zander.”
Scott took a step forward. Cecily went to follow, but he shot a hand out behind him, a wordless instruction to stay where she was. “I don’t know what’s going on, but—”
“Stay out of it, Scott!” Zander bit out, her voice hard and sharp.
“You both need to cool it,” he finished.
“Fuck you,” Zander spat at him, her eyes hard and narrowed above dark circles and pale lips. She turned to Callum. “I told you to get out. Why are you still here?”
Cecily saw Scott stiffen, his hackles rising as certainly as if he was a dog joining the chalk circle.
This was not Zander, Cecily found herself thinking. This was not her sister.
“You don’t get to talk to Callum like that,” Scott said, the waver of anger in his voice so subtle Cecily was sure she was the only one who heard it.
“Oh no!” Zander’s eyes went wide in mock fear. “Or his big, scary brother will—” she dropped the act. “What are you gonna do, Scott? Zen me to death?”
Something niggled in the back of Cecily’s mind—the memory of something Zander had told her once—but the sensation was gone as quickly as it came, overtaken by the shock of the scene in front of her.
“Whose name is on the lease for this house? Mine,” Scott shot back at Zander. “So if anybody’s leaving, I get to say who. And guess what—it won’t be Callum.”
“It’s fine.” Callum was crossing the room before Scott could finish his sentence, heading for the front door and snatching his keys along the way. “I can’t stay here anyway.” He threw a look at Scott. “I’m taking the car.”
Scott took off after Callum, catching the door. “Cal!” He slipped through and slammed it behind him.
The still, silent aftermath of their departure was like standing in a chasm, the air cleaved open by so much ire. Time hung, suspended in the void, unable to knit together again.
The sound of the car engine outside brought words to Cecily’s lips. She took a step toward her sister. “Zander, look—”
Zander spun on her. “Don’t ‘Zander’ me,” she spat. “Just... go after Scott. I know you want to—everybody knows you want to.”
Cecily recoiled, stung. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Zander just shook her head, her scoff cold and stark. Then she crossed the room and opened the front door. “I’m out.”
Cecily was left standing in the middle of the silent room, alone. Reeling.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
“Hey Wren, I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
Wren smiled as she pushed her way through the door of her favorite crystal and herb store on the eastern seaboard. She was glad Beth was working today since she was just passing through. Beth was by far the best employee the place had. She was also a witch.
“I didn’t expect to be coming back this way so soon,” Wren replied. “But the fates had a different idea.” The shop was in Philadelphia in the daylight basement of a colonial era row house turned boutique retail shop in the Old City neighborhood. It was musty and the air always felt damp and warm inside—even when it was crackling cold outside—but its wares and merchandise were straight up legit. Wren had left Boston late last night. She’d driven overnight and arrived in the wee hours of the morning. So she’d parked and slept until the shop opened.
“Fate indeed,” Beth remarked, pushing her over-sized, dark rimmed glasses up by their frame. “The seed packets and starts you’d ordered just came in this morning. I was getting ready to call you.”
Huh. Well that was a lucky coincidence, wasn’t it? “I’d almost forgotten I’d ordered those. Perfect.”
“I’ll go grab them,” Beth rounded the end of the counter. Her slick sheet of almost-black hair shined in the watery sunlight that shown through the small, high windows of the shop as she jogged toward the back room. She reappeared a moment later carrying a cardboard tray with sprouts of green leaves bobbing cheerily above the rim.
“It’s all here,” Beth said with a smile. Her blue eyes caught the light so they appeared to glow behind her glasses as she slid the tray onto the counter. “So if you weren’t here for the order, what brought you in?”
Wren did a quick count: three medicinal poppy plants, four sage, and one pack of butter lettuce seeds. The butter lettuce was for salads, not spells. She had to eat, after all. She looked at Beth. “I’m not sure, actually. It just felt right to stop in. I’m on my way to New Orleans to help a friend, so I’ll be hanging around a couple of mediums—” She paused when Beth’s dark brows arched above her glasses.
“Damn. So, a supernatural party then?” Beth joked.
Wren’s chuckle was quiet. “You’d think that, but my friend is a cloak, so... kind of the opposite.”
“Ah. Well that’s handy.”
“Right?” Wren agreed. She had met Beth the first time she’d come into this shop. It had been on the first route of her new nomadic lifestyle. Wren had still been pretty raw, then. She’d found the shop online and bent her itinerary so she could stop in to buy some palo santo and sage sticks. Instead, she’d found herself near the back of the shop, staring at an elaborate lay of stones and crystals, watching a woman older than she was but with ageless energy meditating over them. Beth had opened her eyes and looked right at Wren. She’d invited her to sit. They’d drunk tea and Beth had read her through the crystals on the table between them—a skill Wren still had yet to learn about—and it had been like talking to an old friend. Connecting, like for like.
Wren had made a point of swinging into the shop whenever she’d pass through Pennsylvania since then.
“Poor thing can’t catch a break, though,” she went on with a sympathetic smile. “Her sister and boyfriend were being tormented by this Shadow last year, which they destroyed. Her job has been hell. And now she said she and the boyfriend are having issues. Seems like a good time to go see her.”
Beth’s eyes narrowed. “A Shadow is pretty deep shit. How’d they destroy it?”
“Uh...” Wren thought back and realized she’d never asked. “I’m not sure, actually. I didn’t help.” Which was shitty in and of itself, but not something she was interested in going into right then.
“And now she and the boyfriend are having issues?” Beth asked.
Wren paused. “Apparently, yeah. Why?”
“Well, a cloak can harbor negative energy and not know it,” Beth said. “So if they absorb something evil, it can hide in the veil and nobody would know—not even the cloak—until it’s too late.”
Wren’s chest got tight.
The sensation from last night, the slithering cold that had slipped up her back—had that been a sign that something evil was at play?
Wren cast her thoughts back in time, trying to remember what she had told Zander all those months ago when she’d called asking for help. Had she said something that would have led Zander to think she should absorb the Shadow? Is that how they’d destroyed it?
God, she couldn’t remember. Those days were a foggy blur in her memory.
What had Zander done? And why had Wren never thought to ask?
“Wren? You okay?” Wren focused on her again. Beth’s expression was of full of concern, the subtle lines around her eyes only visible now that she was furrowing her brow.
“How would we know?” Wren asked. “What would that look like? If the Shadow was trapped in the veil with her?”
Beth looked to the ceiling, thinking. “Depression, most likely. Lashing out. Later, she might not remember it. That would be pretty far down the road, though.”
I want to fix it but I don’t think I can... That’s what Zander had said last night.
“Don’t forget your plants,” Beth said, scooping the tray up from the counter and holding it out.
Wren hadn’t realized she’d started to turn toward the door. She needed to call Zander. Like, now. She tried to make her laugh easy going as she took the tray from the other witch. “Right. Thanks.”
“Hey.” Beth didn’t let go of the tray, and when Wren looked at her, her gaze was serious, her eyes holding onto Wren’s like she wanted to make sure the message hit home. “If your friend is in trouble, you may not be able to fix it alone. I’ll text you a list of supplies. Do you have a reliable source down in New Orleans?”
Wren nodded, her heart starting to pound, the sound loud in her ears. “I do, yeah. Completely legit.”
“Good.” She let go of the tray. “Merry part.”
“Merry meet again,” Wren mumbled as she turned for the door. She thought she heard Beth mumbling a spell for guidance and light as the shop door closed behind her.
Five minutes later, Wren was putting the RV into drive and the sound of a ringing phone was chiming through the speakers. Three rings, then it went to voicemail:
“This is Zander. I can’t answer right now but leave a message and I’ll get you back as soon as I can.”
Beep.
“Zander, it’s Wren. Call me when you get this. I’m heading your way. I should be there in less than twenty-four hours.” It was a seventeen-hour drive. That left her seven hours to sleep in two shifts between Philly and NOLA. With the help of coffee, she could make that work.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
Zander was sweating. She knew she must be warm—it was September in New Orleans, after all. The humidity was clinging to her skin and sticking the hairs she needed to have trimmed to the back of her neck.
She should have felt the heat, she should have felt warm.
But she didn’t. She felt cold.
She shivered as she walked down the sidewalk. She’d been walking for a while, but she wasn’t going anywhere in particular. Just walking. Just trying to clear her head so she could decide what to do now.
Because she wasn’t alone.
She knew she wasn’t. When she’d screamed at Callum, it hadn’t been her who’d done it. She hadn’t been the one to yell at Scott. Or the one to snap at Cecily. But she had been the one to leave the house. She couldn’t be around them. If she stayed, she’d keep hurting the people she cared about the most.
If she stayed, she’d destroy them.
So she left. Now she just had to figure out what to do.
Her phone buzzed in her back pocket but she ignored it. It would be Cecily, calling to make sure she was okay, and right then, Zander couldn’t handle the thought of talking to her.
Not until she figured this out.
Because she would figure this out. She was going to fight this motherfucker. And she was going to win.
No matter what she had to do.
It wasn’t until she was walking among the mausoleums that Zander registered having walked into the cemetery.
That seemed apropos, she thought as she slowly meandered between two small buildings—architecture for the dead. It was like a small city in the shadow of the bridge taking people and cars to the main part of the city across the river. It was dingy-beautiful, sad-sacred, just like New Orleans.
Just like Zander’s time here had become.
Won’t it be nice to see home again? Came the voice in the back of her mind. It was louder today than it had been last night.
Zander shook her head. She couldn’t go home like this. Not back to the house. And not back to Seattle. She couldn’t bring this home to her mother, to Alyssa—they were defenseless against it. Defenseless against her.
She wasn’t sure what made her do it, but she toed her shoes off, then reached down and picked them up, hooking them at the heels so they dangled from her index and middle fingers as she kept walking through the grass between the raised graves.
How was she going to fix this?
How could she have let the things she said to Callum come out of her mouth?
Her mouth.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been in control of the words, they had come from between her lips, pushed from between her teeth.
She couldn’t take them back. She couldn’t unsay them, couldn’t make Callum unhear them.
Did you see his face? The voice chuckled.
She couldn’t unhurt him.
No, you can’t unhurt him. But you can let me go.
That gave her pause. “Let you go?”
Let me go, the voice replied. Just open the cloak and cast me out. Then you’ll be free of me.
Could it be that simple?
No, of course not. It wasn’t that simple. If she let it out, it would torment Callum and Cecily instead. She’d saved them when she absorbed the Shadow. Now she had to be strong enough to keep them safe.
That’s what she was meant to do. That was her role in all of this.
She was The Cloak. She was the only one who could do it.
Her foot landed on something hard in the grass; it rolled and buckled her ankle, but she caught herself with nothing more than a sidestep. Looking down, whatever it was she’d stepped on glinted silver in the sunshine. She bent and picked it up.
It was a pocketknife. And a really nice one at that. The kind that had other tools—pliers, a bottle opener, probably tweezers—stashed within it. It was heavy, the silver matte instead of bright. Somebody was probably missing this.
She sat on the grass, in the shade cast by one of the graves, and slid the knife from the housing.
Her father had had a knife like this when she was a kid. It wasn’t as nice as this one was, but the same idea. He’d kept the blade clean and sharp; the blade had looked just like this one. She’d gotten in trouble once, when she was maybe six or seven years old, for playing with it. She’d cut her hand trying to hide it when her dad had found her. It hadn’t hurt more than a paper cut, but then her hand was wet and when she’d brought it out from behind her back, it had been covered in blood. She’d needed stitches.
This knife looked even sharper.
How was she going to fix everything she had done?
Callum wouldn’t forgive her—she wouldn’t, if she were in his position—but that wasn’t what was most important now.
How could she make Callum safe? How could she make her sisters, her mother, Scott safe?
What are you doing?
She knew how to end this and the knowledge made her hands shake.
What are you doing? asked the voice with more insistence this time.
“I’m keeping you from hurting them.”
No. I won’t hurt them. Let me out and I’ll leave them alone.
Zander’s chuckle was low and devoid of mirth. Maybe it would leave them alone—but probably not. And even it if did... “So you can torture someone else?”
She could feel its reaction. Feel it recoiling under her skin, pushing against the cloak, trying to force its way out.
That was all the motivation—all the confirmation—Zander needed.
She propped her wrist across her knee, closed her eyes, and brought the blade to her skin.
