“EDWARD!”
At Mullins’s shout, Edward dropped the test tube he was holding, vaulting toward the door to the common room before it even shattered on the floor.
He got there just in time to see Mullins, back to him, standing in front of the most beautiful man Edward had ever seen.
His skin color was pale lavender, and his face—square-jawed, strong-chinned, with delicate cheekbones and a decisive nose—was beautifully proportioned, absolutely symmetrical.
His almond-shaped eyes were brilliant turquoise. He caught Edward’s eyes over Mullins’s shoulder, then reached out and touched him.
And they disappeared.
“The… oh my God. Mullins!” All thoughts of the spell, thoughts of rescue, flew out of his head. All he could remember was the bleakness and the sorrow in Mullins’s eyes every time he’d been banished back to that cold, blood-dripping little cell, to the beatings, to the screams that he never mentioned but Edward knew made up the soul-shredding reality of every moment.
Unless he was with Edward.
“Mullins!”
“Stop it!” A woman—Lady Cory—was shaking him by the arm, yelling at him. “Goddammit, Edward, fucking stop!”
The profanity, of all things, penetrated his haze.
“You swear a lot,” he said, his throat hoarse with screaming.
“You fucking think? Look—he’s okay. For right now, he’s okay!”
“How do you know?” Edward all but sobbed. “He’s back in hell—”
“Well if he is, it’s not because a demon got him.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “Although, goddammit, it would have given me room to think. Bracken, you feeling this?”
“No, Cory, I’m just along for the fucking ride. Of course I feel it. You’re right—it wasn’t a demon. We know who it was.”
Edward stared at them blankly. “It was the red man,” he said, feeling out of his league. “Or, you know. Purple now. It was the demon who got him in trouble—”
“Oh, honey,” Cory said, patting his face. “Sweet baby. That wasn’t a demon. The demons are still clamoring to get in. To get in and out of our shields like that? That was something much older and much more powerful than those fucking asswipes clawing at the hill right now.”
“What—I don’t understand.”
“It was a god,” Harry muttered, coming slowly down the stairs.
“You look like hell,” Edward said, his throat thick. His brother was still pale, and he looked as though he hadn’t eaten in a month. “What are you doing out of bed?”
Harry was wearing a pair of sleep pants and nothing else—it was clear he’d been resting. But his face wasn’t flushed, and he wasn’t sweating with fever. While pale, he wasn’t waxy with sepsis. Edward could almost forgive him for being sick.
“The whole hill heard you scream,” Harry muttered. “Did you tell him yet, my lady?”
“You stole my line,” Cory said, taking Edward by the arm and setting him down in the corner of one of the butt-ugly couches. “Suriel, sweetie, do you have him?”
Suriel grunted, scooping Harry up into his arms and cradling his head against his shoulder.
“Idiot,” he muttered.
“Did she tell me what?” Edward asked, feeling lost. “What do you mean, god?”
“Edward,” Harry said with exasperation, “who do you think sent us on a special extra side mission to make a penis staff out of a snake?”
Edward gaped, all of his attempts to remember suddenly paying off. He’d tried—he’d worked so hard, but finally the addition to the spell list and the big gaps in his memory were making an awful sort of sense.
“Did I miss him?” The voice snapped Edward out of his shock and he looked toward the stairs again, this time seeing a young man—seventeen at the most—taking the steps at a sprint. He was followed by a man in a law enforcement uniform, a little older than Cory and Nicky.
“Miss your father?” Cory said with a grimace. “Yes, Sam, I’m sorry. He used your blood-link to get past our shields, grabbed Edward’s boy here, and took off.”
Sam grunted in disappointment, and Edward got a good look at the kid who’d apparently stolen his mother’s car to get here.
“Oh dear God,” he muttered.
“Yup,” Cory said, moving around the couches to give Sam a hug. “It’s freaky as a fuck in a fishbucket, ain’t it.”
Edward stared at the young man as the others in the hill—including Bracken, Teague, and Nicky—stepped forward to embrace the young man.
Who was a dead ringer for Mullins.
“Please,” he said loudly, voice breaking. “Please—somebody explain this to me.”
Cory put her hand on his shoulder. “Me and Suriel are going to go make sure your hex bags are good to go—we need to get him back ASAP, and you’ve had a shock. Sam, you come talk to Edward here and explain shit, ’kay?”
“Any time, my lady,” he said with a head bob. His hair was dark and curly, which was already familiar, but his eyes—Mullins’s shape, Mullins’s color—rested on Edward’s face with a wealth of compassion. He stepped out of the embrace of half a dozen people to come crouch in front of Edward’s seat, while Suriel set Harry down on the couch Bracken had occupied.
“You’ll be okay?” Suriel asked anxiously, and Harry looked up at him and smiled tiredly, squeezing his hand.
“Go help,” he ordered. “I’ve been enough of a hindrance—”
“Sh.” Suriel kissed his temple, his red-gold hair streaming down over his shoulder like a curtain. “I’ll be back when we’re done.”
He left, and Harry and Edward were there with Bracken and a young man who looked enough like Mullins to make Edward doubt his sanity.
“You saw him?” Sam said, before they could say anything. “You saw the other?”
“Wait,” Edward said, feeling dense. “That’s… the red man or purple man or whatever—”
“The other,” Sam said matter-of-factly. His eyes—so much like Mullins’s—were older than their years. “You saw him.”
“I don’t understand,” Edward said faintly, and Bracken laughed.
“I’ll help. Mullins’s little sister—you needed something from an ancestor, right? Well, Sam looks just like him—cheekbones, chin—there’s even a little mole by his ear. It’s frightening. So for the sake of coincidence, we’re going to say Sam is a long-ago descendent—”
“But the odds of that would be—”
“Astronomical,” Sam said promptly. “A terrifying coincidence. So improbable that I would be coming here the exact day you arrived that it should be impossible.”
“Yes,” Edward said, shaking out of his funk. “Exactly. How is it possible at all?”
“Well, that’s my other bloodline,” Sam told him, his mouth going flat and grim. “That red or purple or blue jerkoff who took off with your boyfriend is also my father. You got yer God, you got yer Goddess, you got yer other. That’s Pop. He’s the god of random fucking chaos. My guess is, he gave me the call to come here because you needed my blood for your spell. You do, right?”
“Yes,” Edward said again, the hair on the back of his neck lifting up. “We do.”
“So I wake up this morning with a pull in my stomach to cut school and drive seven hours to say hi to Lady Cory. I peed in a bottle, the urge to get here was so strong. Seriously. The garage fey are going to love me.”
“Possibly more than you ever dreamed,” Bracken said dryly. “They’re weird that way.”
“Squick. Ee.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Anyway—so Dad knows I’m coming, he knows the shields are going to be up, and he just bides his time. The minute my car hit the shields, he slides in. We’re related by blood, right? The shields are friendly to Sam, so they’re friendly to Sam’s dear old fucking dad. So he sneaks in here, grabs your guy, and goes.” Sam met Bracken’s eyes. “How’m I doing?”
“Spot on,” Bracken said dryly. “Sorry you missed him.”
Sam blew out a breath. “Well, it would have been nice to meet him, period. But I take it I need to go bleed in a jar?”
Edward smiled a little. “Hair, fingernail clippings, spit—”
“Semen,” Sam supplied, because he was a teenager, and he apparently had the same filter Cory did.
“Keep your love life to yourself,” Bracken told him, and then snickered. Apparently it wasn’t just teenagers.
Sam grinned, showing a mouthful of unnaturally straight and even teeth. “You stay you,” he said, and Bracken nodded before the kid turned on his heel and went to spit in a jar.
Edward sagged against the couch.
“He just disappeared,” he whispered.
Harry leaned forward and patted Edward’s knee awkwardly. “I remember the feeling,” he said. “But you know what to do now, right?”
Edward tried to smile. “Jump naked into a shootout with coke-addled human traffickers armed with semiautomatic weapons?”
“Mm… good times,” Harry said, nodding, and Edward had to laugh. It was exactly what Harry had done.
But he’d also confronted the scariest moment of their past.
“Confront your inner demons?” Edward guessed then, not sure why this hadn’t occurred to him.
“What are yours?” Harry asked, voice so low only Edward could hear him.
Edward swallowed hard against the lump in his throat, and two lifetimes of love and loss opened up to devour his heart whole.
“Remember?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Remember what I was like after Dorothy?”
“Yes, my brother. I remember.”
Edward looked into his eyes for judgment—and found only understanding.
“If I lose Mullins… it will take decades to fish me out of that well,” he said, knowing this fear so intimately, it was like it wore his skin.
“Centuries,” Harry supplied cheerfully. “One at the least. I’ll look forward to hauling you out.”
Edward half laughed. “I’ll be in the depths of depravity,” he told Harry—but he couldn’t stay earnest in the face of Harry’s steadfastness.
“And Francis and Beltane and Suriel and I will be there,” Harry said, suddenly sober. “But we would miss Mullins too. Let’s see what we can do to get him back first.”
Edward’s eyes burned, and he wiped them on his palm. “I’ll do my best,” he whispered.
“Think of the things you’ll say to him.” Harry’s shrug told of his pain when Suriel had gone missing. “Think of all the actual words you want him to have etched in his heart.”
Edward startled. “Oh my God.” He remembered Leonard’s last advice about the spell Edward would have to cast—and he remembered his own thoughts about how to get Mullins back if he was ever snatched back to hell.
“You just figured out what to do?” Harry asked.
“Yes!” But oh hell. Oh no. “How do you feel?” Oh God. His brother was so pale.
“Top of the world.” Harry’s smile was just a tinge crazy. As it always would be.
“Can you boomerang me to Mullins using Sam’s blood?”
Harry cocked his head. “Challenge accepted. You realize you could end up spattered among every descendent of Mullins’s little sister on the four corners of the earth, right?”
Edward grimaced. “Maybe you should write that spell down on paper first.”
“Right,” Harry conceded. He put his arm underneath him as though he were about to get up, and then fell back against the couch. “Hells.”
“Stay there,” Edward told him, standing. “I’ll go get you pen and paper—”
And like that, pen and paper materialized on Harry’s lap.
“Thank you,” they both said in unison, and then met eyes and laughed a little.
“I should really ask Green if we can send some brownies back for Emma’s kitchen,” Harry said fondly. “It might make up for the worry of the last month.”
Edward nodded again, the thought of home soothing him.
“I’ll come up with the spell,” Harry added. “And the spell to get you back, since it’s on the tip of your tongue.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Edward told him firmly. “To get back, I mean. But will you be strong enough to get me there? That’s all I’ll need.” He wouldn’t sacrifice Harry for Mullins. He couldn’t.
He’d never be able to look his lover in the eyes afterward.
“I’d better,” Harry laughed. “Emma would never forgive me if we had to go collecting your DNA from the four corners of the earth in another treasure hunt.”
“It’s your DNA I’m worried about!” Edward wanted to smack him. “Harry, you almost died.” It was the truth, and no amount of his brother’s posturing could hide it.
“Greatly exaggerated,” Harry lied. He waved Edward away. “Go on. I’m trying to be heroic.”
Edward watched from the corner of his eye as Bracken wobbled slightly, as though he’d taken a heavy blow to the knees.
“We have no time,” he said, angry. “Dammit, Harry, you’d better be fine.” And with that he stood up to go help with the spell.
LATER, FRANCIS and Beltane told him he was amazing. Crisp, logical, reasonable. He gave clear instructions and had an easy-to-follow plan—the people of Green’s Hill were eating out of his hand.
Green apparently handed over his three strands of hair—over five feet long and smooth as spun gold—with a faint smile. “Ah, Emma. Lovely woman. I’m sure she’s an amazing mother.” And Edward added it to the hex bags—under spirit.
Sam had extended his wrist, and Bracken had drawn a gentle finger across it, painlessly freeing just enough of what apparently was very potent blood.
But Edward didn’t remember any of that. One part of his brain was engaged with what he had to do, what was necessary to do to get Mullins back. The other part was screaming, and no amount of common sense could silence that part of his brain.
And Edward worked, going up to the now darkened orchard and laying out three five-pointed stars, one within the other, with unerring precision.
Cory and her people came out and assumed a place, one at each point of the pentagram circle that was now nearly twenty feet in diameter. Suriel and his brothers took their places at four corners, making sure they were aligned with spirit as well, and Harry watched unhappily, sitting in Cory’s nursing cushion and propped up against a tree.
“Blood yet?” Beltane asked, pulling out a small scalpel that they had for just that purpose. Edward saw Green’s people pulling out blades of their own—steel for the werefolk, silver for the elves, vampire fangs for anybody who wished them.
Cory was holding her wrist in front of Bracken, waiting for him to cut her flesh with his touch alone.
And suddenly Edward was right there in the moment.
“Not you, my lady,” he said softly. And then, with the eyes of a crowd of people—some of them strangers—looking at him for leadership, he felt—truly felt—what it was to be a leader.
“No, my lady,” he said, his voice stronger than he could ever remember it being. He had to make sure these people knew what he was and what he wasn’t—and what they were offering with their blood on the hex bags.
“I’m sorry?” Cory asked, affronted.
“This ritual—it took years from our mother’s life. And yes, she was an immortal, and the years were hers to give, but I’m sorry. Your people need all the years you have.”
Cory’s twisted smile of acquiescence hurt—but she backed out of the circle, and a dreamy-eyed elf with hair that seemed to shift color with every breeze stepped in after her.
“You should all know that,” he said, his voice carrying across the suddenly quiet yard. There were vampires surrounding them, he realized, hands joined. He wondered if they were there for protection—he’d noticed Cory’s eyes unfocused a lot, as she ordered people around. Perhaps they were hers. “This spell was done once with two people—but one of them was an angel in active service. The other was my mother, and she sacrificed years of her life. I realize you all have extended lifespans, but so do I.” He shrugged. “Every moment is precious. I have the feeling you all know this, probably more than most mortals. So right now, decide if that’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make for a complete stranger. My brothers and I were prepared to make it alone—we could do that again.”
Not a soul moved, and Edward bent his head humbly.
“I have no words,” he said. “My family is indebted to you for your kindness.”
“The brownies miss you,” Green told him from behind the vampires, arm wrapped firmly around Cory’s and Bracken’s shoulders. Nicky was in the circle—because he was as immortal as Green. “If we could send some of them to your home, they will be happier, and you’ll have discharged your debt.”
“But that doesn’t make sense!” Beltane muttered loudly. He was glared into silence by Francis, who, for once, seemed to understand.
Edward pulled his heart from his throat. “So Harry’s going to send me to where Mullins is, and then….” Edward thumped the snake-and-rhinoceros-horn staff in his hand next to the mirror at his feet. “Then, when you see this coming through the mirror, please pull us out.”
There was general laughter.
“And when Mullins is situated in the middle, I’ll start the spell. Are we clear?”
General assent then, and Edward took a deep breath. “Harry, you ready?”
Harry pushed himself standing. “You’d better not get lost, you prick!”
“You’d better not send me to the place with the big blue corn, idiot!” Edward snapped back. He saw Harry’s lips curve wickedly and knew that they’d both said “I love you, brother,” in front of an entire crowd of people.
And then everything—elves, werecreatures, vampires, brothers—all of it disappeared.