Chapter Twenty

Two Days Later

November 18, 2026

 

“FATHER IS HANDLING estate business and I have to go with him,” Rowan said, packing two notebooks into a satchel that he buckled and tossed over his head, settling the strap over his chest. “We’ll be gone a couple of hours, checking on the land. Rent is direct debit, but I want to see how everyone is coping with the weather and check if they need extra help. Father has to be there or the farmers will start to talk and they’ll threaten to put him in a hospital.”

Storm caught his shoulders and stared into Rowan’s blue eyes, breathing steadily until Rowan matched him. Once the panic had subsided, he offered a calming, distracting kiss.

Rowan clutched at Storm’s jumper and pulled him closer, sinking into the moment as though they’d never get another chance. Technically, they weren’t alone; Kyrie and Yael stood barely a foot away, but as always, whenever he kissed Rowan the rest of the world disappeared. His magic crackled beneath his skin, whispering and pushing, telling him to go to Rowan, to surrender and join their magic.

Storm broke the kiss and stared at Rowan, whose lips quirked into a teasing smile.

“I think I would be more willing to listen to your magic if we didn’t have an audience and I wasn’t about to walk out the door,” Rowan whispered, not helping the rush of hormones that made Storm want to shut the door on the rest of the world. When Rowan nipped at Storm’s bottom lip and kissed him, he accepted but didn’t reciprocate. They couldn’t afford to be distracted today, not even by each other.

Eyes glittering with ice blue affection, Rowan broke the kiss and touched Storm’s chest to gently push him away. “I’ll see you in a few hours.” Stepping away, Rowan called over his shoulder to Yael as he headed for the bedroom door. “Bring him back in one piece.” One step out the door, he paused and waved at the demons, winking at Storm before he closed the door.

Storm understood the warning, however sweetly delivered, because Yael insisted on trying his necromancy skills again but with Kyrie in tow in case assistance was required. The care and concern from Rowan wasn’t new, but after a lifetime of Gladys’s emotional distance and lack of motherly instincts, Storm still blushed whenever Rowan was openly affectionate.

He cleared his throat and turned to the two demons, where Kyrie grinned in amusement and Yael raised an eyebrow as if to ask if the romantic displays were necessary. “Let’s go practice the dark arts,” he said, avoiding both demons as he turned for the door and resolutely refused to look back.

He was the Dark One, for crying out loud; he didn’t need to ask permission to have a boyfriend…or an almost…sort-of…boyfriend.

*

“WHEN YOU SAID we were practising my necromancy skills, I didn’t think we’d end up here,” Storm said, glaring at Yael. They knew he didn’t want to be here; he swore he wouldn’t return to this house until Gladys was dead.

Yael pushed open the front door. “I borrowed your talking contraption and sent a message to Foley, asking him to have Gladys visit his house for tea,” they explained with an accusing tone that said Storm should know better than to question them.

“She’ll poison him!”

“I warned him about her particular talent for mind-manipulation,” they insisted, now sounding and looking like Storm was lacking more than a few brain cells. “I suggested his parents should be in attendance. She isn’t likely to curse him with two strong white witches in the same room.” Yael shook their head and gestured for Storm to walk into the house, holding the door open for him.

Reluctantly, he went inside, relieved Gladys wasn’t here. He wanted to be at full strength with his dark magic at his beck and call and with no doubt he could do what needed to be done when the inevitable confrontation happened.

“He’s also invited Denver on the pretence of being concerned about your absence,” Yael added as Kyrie stepped into the house, then shut the door and surveyed the room. “They’re going to lay the groundwork of your fight, that you’ve been distant since your ascension, and you haven’t seen them since you came into your powers. That should keep them safe.”

“Fine. You thought of everything,” he grumbled, resisting an eye roll to focus on the room. “What are we doing here?”

“Rescuing a captive.”

The straightforward answer took him by surprise. He was used to Yael being cryptic and confusing, lecturing him and dropping hints, so this was somewhat of a relief. Storm had wanted to do something about the Donald situation ever since Kyrie first told them.

“Donald is a demon,” they said, realising from his face that he’d caught on. “He will have the power you require to complete the task. He is not dead, according to Kyrie’s reading, which I trust to be extremely accurate. The boy is simply hibernating inside the skin of a curse which you have the power to break.” The way Yael looked at him, this would be considered part of his necromancy lessons and Storm would be expected to correct his previous failure. “If you succeed at this, you can then feel confident enough to complete your necromancy training.”

“You keep saying ‘training’. What do you mean? The other times you talk about me learning magic you call them lessons. Why is this different?”

Yael stepped forward to awkwardly place a hand on Storm’s shoulder, as if copying a gesture they didn’t entirely understand. “Because you are training for the greatest and most important moment of your life,” they said, dropping their consoling touch to his arm. “You must bring back the love of your life from the dead. In this, there can be no mistakes.”

Storm swallowed the emotion that rose at the thought of losing Rowan. Yael said the words like Rowan’s death was set in stone. Ever since he’d returned from the future, he’d never stopped to wonder if losing the person who mattered most was the one event impervious to change.

He braced for whatever was about to happen, fighting the emotion surrounding his thoughts about Rowan, and followed when Yael headed for the staircase at the left of Gladys’s living room.

He’d expected Yael to lead the way upstairs, but they climbed the first four steps to the landing and pushed open the door to the basement. Yael walked through first with Storm following Kyrie to keep the innocent demon between them. If anything happened to Kyrie after the trust he’d put in Storm, he’d never forgive himself.

Storm wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he followed Yael and Kyrie into the basement, descending a dozen steps into the darkness. He’d been so sure Kyrie’s explanation of how he found Donald had been a demon’s exaggeration or natural dramatics, but this was horrifyingly real.

The usual junk filled the first half of the basement; the washer and dryer on the left of the stairs that led into the middle of the room, the boiler and storage cases on the right. Yael knew where they were going, bypassing the normal items to head for the back wall, where an eight-by-eight foot cage occupied the rest of the basement.

“How did I not know this was here?”

Kyrie rested a hand on his arm. “The cage is shrouded in dark magic. Maybe you couldn’t penetrate the spell until you ascended to your full powers?”

Shame flooded him, knowing why he’d never seen this cage. He’d moved out at age fourteen, fed up with Gladys’s hovering, lectures, and the way she cared but never loved. She made him feel empty when he saw other teenagers with their parents. He’d hated knowing she wasn’t his mum even when she sometimes acted like a parent without ever showing him love. Storm had no one else to call family or home, and life had been simpler by himself where he didn’t need to accept how alone he was in the world.

Right now, he realised he’d done the same to DJ as he’d done to his dad; he’d avoided the family home for fear of his personal demons and never returned to Gladys’s house for more than a visit or the rare meal. He didn’t want to get sucked into the life he’d left behind or to confront the reasons he’d left.

Seeing the huddled figure inside the cage filled him with remorse. He’d run from Gladys and never thought about what he was leaving behind. Storm looked around the basement at the ghosts who had gathered, trapped in this house either because this had been where they lived and died or because they were bound here.

“Yael,” he whispered, eyes welling with tears as he realised how haunted this house truly was. He could feel the anger and pain and hear the screams of these people dying in this house. Without waiting for Yael’s response or to think about what he was doing, Storm rolled up the sleeves of his jumper and brought his magic to the surface, an automatic reaction to the emotion clogging his throat and crushing his heart.

The apparitions turned as if summoned by his movement and pressed closer, reaching out and whispering his name. Others shied away from the dark magic that no doubt had a hand in their deaths. “I can help you,” he said aloud, needing them to not be afraid. “Take what you need from me.” He held out his hands to the ghost nearest him, willing to help them move on from this nightmare of an existence. They deserved more, no matter how they had lived or why they had died, and Storm was the only one who could give them freedom.

Yael’s sharp word—his name—resonated the moment their ghostly fingers touched his, and the world descended into white light and shadows.

*

“STORM?”

Scrunching his eyes against the bright light, Storm winced as his entire body throbbed with pain, and he absently wondered why his dad’s voice was ringing in his ears. He didn’t remember his dad being here or why he was lying on a cold stone floor.

“Youngling?”

Storm let Yael’s voice wash over him. Yael and his dad sounded pissed, so maybe he shouldn’t wake up yet.

“Dark One?” Kyrie’s tentative voice joined the chorus of screams and last breaths ringing inside his head.

As his consciousness gradually sharpened and returned to full strength, the sounds transformed into something else.

“Thank you, Dark One.” An old man bowed and walked away.

A girl, no more than four years old, grasped his hand and beamed brightly. “Thank you, necromancer.” She knelt beside Storm and hugged him tightly before taking the hand of a woman who waited nearby, her eyes cautious and curious.

“Thank you, young Tera,” she said with a brief nod, then led the girl away.

Storm felt dizzy as a horde of once screaming, tear-streaked faces became smiles and relief. The spirits left the darkness of the basement for a patch of light streaming in through the bars of the cage on the far side of the room. Opening his outer eyes, he squinted at the darkness. The basement lacked windows and had no overhead light because Gladys insisted it hurt her old eyes. He knew the truth now and had a feeling he’d done something unexpectedly reckless.

“Are you with us, son?” his dad’s voice asked, a hand reaching for his shoulder.

“Asher!” Yael shouted so loud that Storm winced. “The boy has just allowed a coven of spirits to pass through him, do you think he should risk touching another? In the state he is in?”

Storm resisted the urge to take his dad’s hand and focused on getting to his feet, grateful when Kyrie offered his hand for extra support. His legs felt like jelly and halfway up, he fell flat on his ass. For the sake of his dignity, he stayed on the floor.

“You may have become his best friend, his demon, protector, and teacher… You can do what I cannot—” Asher shot a glare at Yael that could have melted ice, but Yael ignored him to offer Storm another hand to lean on. “—but I am still his father, and you will not take that from me!”

The warning was clear, though Storm’s brain was so fried he couldn’t fathom who the warning was for or why. To his surprise, Yael had the decency to blush.

Storm took Yael’s hand, their free hand going to his elbow while Kyrie took his right side and helped hoist Storm to his feet, where he wobbled before stumbling toward the cage. Clinging to the bars for stability hardly helped preserve his dignity.

Clearing their throat, Yael bobbed their head to Asher. “I apologise, Dark Mage,” they said, keeping their eyes on the ground, their posture diminutive and subservient. The very sight of Yael holding such a pose sent flutters of concern through Storm’s stomach. “You are right. I am not, nor do I wish to be, a father or father figure to Storm. He is my friend and will one day be my mage. I am here only to serve him and his family.”

Gods, that sounded awful.

“No.” The word came out of Storm so sharply he winced and raised a hand to his forehead. “No serving anyone,” he objected, glaring at the relative area where Yael stood. He was beginning to see double and figured he’d banged his head on his way to the floor. “You’re my friend, and that’s where we begin and end. If we decide to do magic together, that’s something friends do. Foley and I do magic together all the time.”

“I see.” Yael raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised by that information. “Very well.”

Storm realised something else needed to be said. Turning to his dad, his ghostly presence standing near the cage, Storm narrowed his eyes at the three swaying figures to find a central point close to his dad’s face. “Don’t be mad at Yael. I don’t know what I did, but I was going to take your hand. For now, can we please just focus on Donald?”

Everyone remained quiet in what he presumed was agreement until Kyrie awkwardly raised his hand. “That may be a problem.” He helped Storm turn and pointed to the lump of a body on the concrete floor. “The boy is unconscious.”

“Damn.”