Chapter 8

I could smell the cinnamon buns even before I descended the stairs. Apparently, Rose had brought in breakfast. Forgoing the kitchen, I crossed the foyer into the dining room beside the front drawing room, where a breakfast buffet had been laid on the tall sideboard. Rose was still treating us as guests instead of family, which I knew shouldn’t have irked me as much as it did. I’d asked for professional courtesy, after all.

My aunt, dressed head to toe in pink silk and wool, was sitting two chairs from the head of the dark oak table that sliced through the center of the long, narrow room. Declan, in a black T-shirt and jeans, was across from her, though one seat closer to the head of the table.

Rose looked up as I entered, offering me a tentative smile.

“Good morning,” I said, crossing to the sideboard and flipping the lid on a carafe of coffee. I leaned over, eagerly inviting the heavy, slightly burnt aroma to fill my senses.

“Good morning, darling,” Rose said, sounding utterly delighted. My aunt had a way of putting all confrontation behind her as quickly as possible, whether or not an issue had actually been resolved.

Declan grunted a greeting, then flipped a page of the newspaper he was holding like it might have been a barrier between him and Rose.

He’d cleared his plate. Rose was nibbling on toast spread with red berry jam.

The dining table was set with charger plates, coffee mugs, and utensils. I selected a small white china bowl from a stack on the sideboard and served myself some fruit salad, completely intending to come back for a double helping of the scalloped potatoes I’d spotted in one of the warmers.

“We need to go to the manor,” Declan said, not looking up from his newspaper. “I’m not waiting around to hear back from some vampire. Whether or not he’s in town doesn’t mean he isn’t involved.”

Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one whose thoughts had strayed to Jasper the previous night.

“I know,” I said as I picked up the carafe of coffee, then carried it and my fruit salad to the seat across from Declan. I chose to sit beside Rose, leaving the head of the table where Jasper would have sat during a full family gathering vacant.

Rose glanced back and forth between Declan and me. “I haven’t collected much information on the vampires. Or contacted some of the out-of-town coven members yet. Give me a few more hours.”

Declan closed the paper. Folding it and tossing it on the table, he reached for his half-full coffee mug and settled back in his chair, staring steadily at our aunt.

He looked utterly out of place surrounded by fine china and delicate furniture. And he wasn’t actually blood related to anyone in the dining room. For some reason, both observations brought a smile to my face. Declan wasn’t a Fairchild.

Rose dropped his gaze, glancing over at me instead.

I carefully placed my bowl of fruit salad on the charger plate set before me. Then I made a show of pouring coffee into the china mug beside it.

“You shouldn’t go out without the vampire,” Rose said. “This is his issue, after all.”

“He walks in the daylight,” I said.

“Yes. I see.” Rose sounded flustered, but was trying to act as if a vampire not being dead to the world while the sun was up wasn’t dreadful news. “Of course.”

Declan set his emptied mug on its saucer, then let his hand settle on the table next to it. He tapped his fingers one at a time as if counting down — or perhaps attempting to control his temper.

I leaned across the table, topping up his mug before sitting down. He nodded thanks, still not looking away from Rose.

“Cream?”

“I take it black,” he said, not unkindly.

I set the carafe on the stretch of linen-swathed table between us, sitting down to sip the hot, dark brew.

“Is he at the manor?” Declan asked Rose, pointedly.

She played with the sterling silver teaspoon on the edge of her saucer.

I speared a piece of cantaloupe out of my bowl of fruit and chewed it slowly, savoring the sweet juice across my tongue.

“Yes. I imagine … I assumed he’d selected a room in the basement, but now that Wisteria has indicated —”

“Not the vampire, Rose.” Declan kept his tone even, but he wasn’t as capable as a true-blood Fairchild was of hiding his anger and frustration.

Even Rose’s outward fretfulness was something of a pretense. Not that she wasn’t worried about what Declan and I were capable of, but she was at least choosing to let us see her concern.

“Is he in residence, Rose? Were you just covering for him last night at Grey and Dahlia’s?”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with your uncle,” my aunt finally said. “This is obviously the vampire’s doing, and Jasmine’s.”

Declan snorted, crossed his arms, and looked at me.

I took a measured sip of my coffee, then set down my mug. China clicked on china, intensifying the tension in the dining room.

“Three vampires are roaming Fairchild territory,” I said, keeping my tone politely crisp. “Perhaps four. Jasmine tracked them here.”

“Perhaps they followed her home,” Rose said. “That would be a far more logical assumption.”

Declan snorted again.

“The chance that they’re here without permission is exceedingly low. And if you didn’t give that permission as acting head of the coven, who did?”

“It’s a simple thing to verify, Rose,” Declan said. “Is he or has he recently been in residence or not?”

My aunt lifted her chin. “No. But I … I haven’t heard from him this morning.”

“I wasn’t aware that he was so … mobile,” I said, spearing a sliced strawberry with my perfectly balanced fork. “That the coven permitted him any time in which to answer a summons.”

“I tried to talk to you last night, Wisteria,” Rose said, laying her hand on my arm. “It’s time to put all this behind you. The coven is weakened without —”

Declan stood abruptly, hitting the edge of the table hard enough to slop my coffee.

Rose snapped her mouth closed on the rest of her plea.

Casually removing my aunt’s hand from my arm by lifting it, I ate the strawberry.

Declan tossed his cloth napkin on the table, downed his hot coffee in one gulp, then slammed the empty cup into its saucer and strode from the room.

“We’ll be heading to Fairchild Manor after breakfast,” I said, keeping my tone even despite the way my heart rate ramped up at my own pronouncement.

“He’s … he’s on the island … for his monthly treatment,” Rose said, expanding on what my mother had said last night.

The island. She most likely meant the property in Barbados. I glanced over at her, but she was avoiding my gaze.

“So he comes and goes as he wishes,” I whispered.

My fruit dish cracked. The white bone china split in half and collapsed to either side, the remainder of my fruit salad spilling out over the charger plate. Evidently, I didn’t have myself as under control as I thought. Rose and I both stared at the ruined bowl.

She swallowed. “Please … it was previously arranged. I’m not strong enough to —”

Declan strode back into the dining room, practically boiling with magic. He placed his hands on the table, leaning across it and leveling his gaze with Rose’s. “If I find out that this is you,” he said. “If I find out that any of you has arranged for Jasmine to be snatched in order to get Wisteria back here …”

The promise of utter destruction was laced through every word, but my heart thumped in my chest for a completely different reason.

“Then what?” Rose snapped, shifting back to rise from her chair — and transforming from a simple healer to the head of the Fairchild coven with that single movement. “You’ll bring the house down on me, Declan? Destroy the only family you’ve ever had, flawed as it might be?”

A terrible fierce smile stretched across Declan’s face. “Don’t allow your snobbery and your misplaced bravado to get away on you, Rose. I’d rather destroy the only family I’ve ever had than allow everything good and true in that family to be drained away.”

“How dare you threaten me across my own dining room table,” Rose said. “I will not —”

“He didn’t mean you,” I said, reaching for the carafe of coffee and topping up my mug.

Rose frowned.

Declan’s nasty smile ebbed into a sneer.

“You’ll make more phone calls, then?” I asked. “Whether or not he is in residence, I’d like to depart immediately after breakfast.”

“Of course,” Rose said stiffly. Then she turned to cross toward the foyer.

“And, Rose …” I called after her.

My aunt paused in the doorway, half turning back to me.

“If Jasper is in any way involved with Jasmine’s disappearance …” — I waved my hand offishly — “… what Declan said holds. There’s no point, you see. Jasper has already tried to take Jasmine from us once. If he manages to kill her this time, we won’t survive it. One way or the other.”

Rose closed her eyes, pained.

I slid my chair back and stood, crossing to the sideboard and serving myself a generous helping of scalloped potatoes from the silver warming dish. “It’s the blood connection, of course,” I said, continuing as if we were having a casual conversation. “And being raised together under great duress. But it’s also what he did to us. How he tied us together. Bound us in power and despair.” Then I lifted my gaze to meet Declan’s. “And pleasure, unwillingly forced upon us —”

“Wisteria …” Rose said, chastising me.

“Oh, I know.” I added two pieces of perfectly crisp bacon to my plate. “Not a proper topic for the breakfast table. And obviously, you still don’t believe me. Or perhaps you just still can’t believe that your brother would be capable of molesting —”

“Please. Don’t.”

Having made my point, I quietly added a mound of scrambled eggs to my plate. Then I carefully closed all the warming dishes and returned to the table.

Rose hadn’t moved from the doorway.

Declan was still watching her, not me.

I smoothed my napkin over my lap, picking up my fork. “You know, it didn’t occur to me at the time, when I was desperate to save Declan and Jasmine from the coven’s wrath, then quickly realized I was going to have to … mitigate the circumstances. But the Fairchild coven could have had the truth, effortlessly. A powerful reader would have shown you all our thoughts. And Jasper’s deeds from his own perspective, of course. A reconstruction could have been collected —”

“Multiple reconstructions,” Declan said. Still standing, he reached across the table to steal one of my pieces of bacon. “Though who could have been commissioned to collect them without bias?”

Rose didn’t respond to either of us.

I took a bite of the scalloped potatoes. They were utterly perfect. Just a hint of onion and garlic, smooth Gruyere cheese, and a touch of salt.

“Of course, any commissioned reader or reconstructionist would have gained too much information about the Fairchild coven,” I said musingly, as if I was simply voicing my thoughts as they occurred to me. “How would you have dealt with that? One of my mother’s untraceable poisons, perhaps.”

“Wisteria … I …” Rose finally broke her silence. “You can’t possibly think we would murder someone, anyone, to cover up anything Jasper had done.”

The scrambled eggs were fluffy, without a hint of dryness. I looked at Declan, who was watching every little thing I was doing. “Remember that day in the orchard?”

He arched an eyebrow at me, picking up his fork and scoring a bite of my potatoes. “With the rabbit.”

Rose flinched as if Declan had slapped her.

“He was seething with power that day,” I said, still keeping my tone completely casual. “I’m not sure that it didn’t distract him. Disposing of his apprentice’s body. Which was how we got off the property without him noticing.”

Declan rubbed his neck. “He noticed.”

“Eventually.”

“He had a lot of apprentices.” Declan’s tone was deep and deadly.

“But accidents happen,” I said, deliberately raising the tenor of my voice over his, light and sweet. “Don’t they, Rose?”

Rose didn’t answer, choosing to walk away instead. My heart sank as I watched her disappear into the foyer.

I never knew what I wanted from her, what I wanted from any of them. Something I couldn’t imagine they would give me even if they were capable of it.

“Did that make you feel better?” Declan asked softly.

Glancing over at him, I noticed that he’d seared his handprints into the linen tablecloth — something he used to do inadvertently when we were younger. So I wasn’t the only one letting my magic get away from me.

I caught his golden-hazel gaze with my own, offering him a self-deprecating smirk. “You tell me.”

Declan threw himself down in his chair without answering. I filled his mug with coffee, emptying the carafe. He nodded thanks, reaching for it but not drinking.

“Jasmine keeps waiting for them to say sorry,” he said, gazing out the windows to my right.

“I never expected an apology. Even at sixteen, I knew what it took to be a Fairchild. Never apologizing is one of their ten commandments.”

Declan sipped his coffee, looking at me. The china mug was too small for his large hands.

I nibbled on a piece of bacon, then carefully wiped my fingers on my napkin. “What I did expect was to be protected. I thought we three were worthy of being protected.”

“You were worthy.”

“No, Declan.” I shook my head, knowing from deep within my soul that I was uttering the absolute truth. “The only Fairchild who cherished us stripped our childhoods from us, perverted our affections, then raped and tried to kill Jasmine.”

He grimaced. “I’m not sure she sees it as rape.”

“We saw it for what it was,” I said.

I knew that Declan remembered that day as vividly as I did. We had ripped through Jasper’s wards, discovering him in the basement with Jasmine. We’d fought him together, tearing Jasmine from our uncle’s grasp.

We saw it for what it was. All of it done in the name of power. All in the name of fortifying the coven.

Declan’s face flushed with some intense emotion he couldn’t quite keep contained. I wasn’t sure if it was anger or regret. Perhaps it was both. “And now they want us back,” he murmured.

My voice fell to a soft, fierce whisper. “The only elder Fairchild who ever loved us was Jasper himself.”

Declan nodded agreement — though he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“So,” I said, “logically, the only Fairchild who would want us back is him.”

“Do you think he’d arrange for Jasmine to be kidnapped in order to draw us here?”

“I certainly wouldn’t doubt it.” I pressed my napkin to my lips, then stood and stepped back from the table. “I’ll get Kett.”

“He’s in the library. I’ll meet you out front with the Jeep.”

Skirting the table and keeping my gaze steadily focused beyond the door, I pressed my hand to Declan’s shoulder. My little finger rested on the warm skin of his neck, just at the edge of his black T-shirt.

He reached up, covering my hand with his own. “Maybe we should finish it today,” he said. His voice was thick with emotion.

“Maybe we won’t have a choice,” I said. “If he’s even there.”

“We always had a choice.”

I laughed mirthlessly. “Jasmine was never negotiable.”

“No,” he said. “And I haven’t blown up a house for at least six months. So, hey, maybe a bonus?”

I threw my head back and laughed. Then I dropped my hand from his shoulder, heading toward the library to recruit an ancient vampire for our mission of vengeance. I had no idea whether Kett would be able to even raise a hand against Jasper directly without breaking the Conclave contract. It was an easy guess that such an action would have consequences, even for the executioner.

But if I was going to storm the manor, I wouldn’t want anyone by my side other than Kett and Declan.

Except Jasmine.

If I was going to die, I would want Jasmine holding my hand.

I found Kett sitting at the computer tucked between shelves of Greek mythology and Elizabethan poetry. As he often did during the day, the vampire looked disturbingly human, quickly clicking through files and pictures on the screen.

Rose’s library was tiny compared to the one at the manor, and canted toward classical literature. It would be unlikely to stumble upon Keats or Austin, or even Hemingway, under Jasper’s roof. But I’d read all those authors in this room whenever Jasper was out of town for more than a day or two, when the three of us had been bundled off to stay with Rose rather than our parents. Otherwise, Declan wouldn’t have had anywhere to go, and Jasper didn’t want us separated.

The niche that had been built between the bookshelves for the computer was a newer addition to the library, but everything else remained the same.

“Good morning,” I said, stepping close enough to see the pictures on the monitor but not close enough to read the text. As unpleasant as the exchange with Rose had been, I had no desire to inadvertently destroy her computer as long as it was a potential link to anything Jasmine had found. “Declan is pulling the Jeep around.”

“We’re heading to the manor,” Kett said.

“Are you guessing, or did you hear us?”

“I never guess.”

I laughed quietly in response to his brief smile.

“He’s not there,” Kett said. “Or he wasn’t early this morning. It’s unlikely he would deny me entry.”

Jasper. He meant that he’d gone to Jasper already. “Since he wants you to remake him in your image.”

“Indeed. Though I’m certain he doesn’t see it that way.” Kett started closing files, but not before I caught a glimpse of a driver’s license bearing Yale’s picture — and a series of images of the teenagers we’d investigated the previous October, including Ben Vern.

“Vampires have driver’s licenses?”

“If they’re trying to walk in the mundane world, yes. And credit cards and bank accounts.”

“Do you have a driver’s license?” I asked. Though I knew Kett drove, I was still oddly perturbed by the idea.

He was suddenly standing beside me. I hadn’t even seen him move. “Same picture as my passport.” He laughed quietly. “Why does the idea disturb you so, little witch?”

I tilted my head, pretending that he hadn’t just startled me. “It’s so normal.”

He chuckled again as he leaned in to me. “I’m anything but normal.”

“And the pictures of the boys?” I asked, drawing back from him and keeping us on the track of the investigation. “Is Ben okay?”

“He’s in Vancouver. Teresa has him well under control now that he is fully realized.”

That didn’t exactly answer my question. “Kett. Is there anything about the investigation you and Jasmine were conducting that I need to know? Anything that could … affect the outcome of this situation?”

“Nothing confirmed.”

“But you suspect … what? Do you think Yale … do you think he plans on hurting Jasmine, or turning her against her will? Like he did with Nigel, or even Amaya?”

Kett became utterly still, casting his gaze toward the wall of mythology tomes behind us. “What had drawn my interest was his ability to turn so many in such a short period of time. And for them to have retained some aspect of their Adept powers, suggesting that he himself was an Adept before he was remade.”

“The silver or white magic around him …” I murmured, recalling the scene in Jasmine’s hotel room. “Suggesting what? Some sort of mind magic? He was a telepath or a reader? An oracle? But how would that have helped the others retain their abilities?”

Kett shook his head. “In the reconstruction, Yale appears to be no older than two hundred years. Yet he has clearly remade three vampires that I know of, and four if the male you spotted in the lobby is his progeny.”

“You thought that Yale’s youth could have accounted for Nigel’s … frailty? Coupled with his lack of magic?”

Kett didn’t answer me. I reached out and tentatively touched his forearm. He smiled, possibly pleased at the intimacy implied in my willingness to make contact with him.

“Yes,” he said, delicately wrapping his fingers around my wrist. “But then there were the boys, as you call them …”

He trailed off, releasing me, and bemusedly looking at his hand.

He’d been touching my white-picket-fence bracelet.

I grabbed his wrist, tugging it toward me. An outline of the bracelet was seared across his palm. Tiny charms and all.

I looked up at him, aghast. I hadn’t even felt any magic shift between us. “I would never … well, I didn’t intentionally —”

Kett laughed, the sound filled with warmth and satisfaction. “Armed for vampire,” he said, repeating Jade’s declaration after she’d tied his magic to my bracelet with seemingly effortless alchemy.

The wound on his hand healed.

I let go of him, stepping back so we weren’t huddled by the bookshelf so intimately. I wasn’t jealous of the affection he held for the dowser. Whether or not I accepted his offer of immortality, he’d made it clear that what he wanted from me went beyond a temporary infatuation. The fact that he could think in terms of centuries — that he could plan for centuries — was unsettling.

But none of that was more important than finding Jasmine before nightfall.

“What about the boys?” I asked, pulling our conversation back on track and trying to figure out what would still interest Kett in the case. “The fact that they rose at all? With only three pints of blood?”

He nodded.

“So you think … that ability is something Nigel inherited? You said your maker inherited a gift from your grandsire, yes?”

“I did. And perhaps.”

“So that makes Yale interesting. Even valuable.”

Kett locked his silver gaze to mine, seemingly pleased at my assessment.

“A Fairchild witch would be a valuable ally,” I murmured. “For you.”

“For Yale,” Kett said, correcting me. “I already have connections to the coven. You and Jasper.”

“So … with that all taken into account, do you think Yale would try to take Jasmine against her will?”

“I think he’d be a fool to try.”

“How foolish do you think he’s already been?” I whispered the question, though I didn’t really want an answer.

“Quite foolish.” Kett brushed his fingers across the back of my hand. Then he was gone.

I wandered out of the library at a slower pace, then climbed the stairs to collect my coat and bag from my room. Too many unknowns were whirling around in my mind.

All the hard evidence pointed toward Kett and Jasmine’s investigation being the center of everything, with Yale having come to Litchfield just as part of whatever game he was playing. But still, I recognized that some self-destructive part of me desperately wanted Jasper to be responsible, so that I could immolate myself while rescuing Jasmine from him a second time.

So that I could destroy the Fairchild coven, avenging my childhood in the process.

The sight of Fairchild Manor was still impressive, even though I’d spent almost every day of my life from the age of nine to sixteen effectively trapped on the property.

Not that I had known I was trapped at the time.

I glanced over at Declan as we drove along the sparsely forested western edge of the estate’s two hundred and eighty acres. His hands were steady at the wheel of the Jeep, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, but tension was etched across his jawline and his thinned lips.

Kett remained a silent accomplice in the back seat, as he had for the entire drive.

I knew that this land didn’t call to Declan in the same way it called to me. It never had, even though the manor was more his home than it was mine. I could remember every footstep, every breath of air, every apple blossom in the spring, and every snow sculpture we’d magically coaxed to form in the yard in winter.

My memories of my childhood were few and far between, but I remembered the feel of Fairchild land. The manor grounds were the magical epicenter of the coven, and had been from even before the main house was built in the early nineteen hundreds.

A dozen yards from the front gates, Declan pulled to a stop.

I glanced over at him questioningly.

“Don’t want the Jeep caught in the line of fire,” he said grimly.

“You think we’ll have a shoot-out at the gate?”

“You don’t?”

I glanced at the six-foot-high stone wall that radiated out from the gate to encircle the acreage. The manor was situated at the top of a gradual slope, and it was a ten-minute walk from the gates to the front door. “I assumed we’d at least make it to the front yard.”

Declan snorted, climbing out of the vehicle.

Kett chuckled to himself, then exited out Declan’s open door.

I gathered my bag, buttoning my coat as I followed them. By the time I reached the twelve-foot-high gatepost, Declan had rung the bell twice. Though the day was colder than the previous night had been, it was bright. Kett was sporting his sunglasses-and-baseball-cap look. He’d abandoned the black cashmere coat — or what was left of it after the damage from Declan’s blasting rod — opting instead for a dark-blue sweater, a scarf woven in different shades of gray, and dark-blue jeans.

Declan reached toward the buzzer a third time.

“Don’t,” I said. “If he’s here, he’ll know we’re anxious.”

“We’re standing by his wards.” Declan pressed his finger to the buzzer and left it there as he eyed me belligerently through his sunglasses. “He knows we’re anxious.”

“Don’t punish me, Declan,” I whispered. “You called. I’m here.”

Declan released the buzzer, looking away from me. “Announce yourself, then,” he said bluntly. “He won’t turn you away.”

I stepped forward, raising my right hand to the impenetrable wall of ward magic that coated the outer edges of the property and could be called forth at any other point on the acreage and used to shield the outbuildings. A separate, even more powerful ward protected the manor itself.

Jasper had often used the centuries of magic embedded within the estate to contain Declan, Jasmine, and me in turn, teaching us to break through that magic. Each time we managed to free ourselves, he had called up another layer with which to contain us. In the end, Jasmine hadn’t been able to free herself. We’d been fourteen at the time, and surreptitiously using Bluebell the brownie to slip Jasmine food and water. After three days, I’d freed her myself. Jasper had responded by punishing Declan for a week, confining him to his room and limiting him to one meal a day. Because punishing Jasmine or Declan was always much more effective than simply punishing me.

Pressing my hand to the magic, I laughed wryly at the painful memory, earning myself a quizzical glance from Declan.

That had been the first time I realized that my uncle couldn’t track or contain Bluebell. It was also the first time it became clear that I was the most naturally powerful of the three of us.

My hand slipped through the ward with no resistance. Declan muttered something nasty under his breath. I pressed my palm toward the lock at the center of the gates. It released.

“We’re expected,” I said, not at all surprised.

The gate slowly opened before us.

“Or you’re still just tied to all of this somehow,” Declan said.

I glanced over at him. “I’m quite possibly about to face the man who destroyed everything I thought to be true and real. Including you, and what I mistakenly thought you felt for me.”

Declan set his jaw as if ready to chew through whatever retort he was about to voice, but I cut him off.

“Except for Jasmine,” I said. “She’s all I have in this world.”

“I would do anything —”

“Either you’re with me,” I said carefully, “or I’ll face whatever’s to come alone.”

“Not alone,” Kett said.

Declan’s gaze slid over my shoulder as he frowned at the vampire.

“I won’t fight you any longer, Declan,” I said. “This is too important.”

“So I’m just supposed to follow you like a besotted acolyte?”

“There is an in-between,” I said. “Make a choice.”

Turning away from him, I reached back with my left hand without looking. At my unspoken invitation, Kett threaded his fingers through mine. Then I pulled a vampire through the wards of the Fairchilds’ most significant stronghold.

At the last possible second, Declan grabbed my elbow and followed us through the gates and onto the driveway.

We paused as the magic that protected the property from uninvited guests flowed in and around us. The invisible energy tugged at my eyes and hands, as if coaxing me to drop my personal shields.

“Impressive,” Kett said.

“You’ve been here before,” I said.

“Not with you.” The vampire’s hand was still entwined with mine.

Declan dropped my arm as soon as the boundary magic accepted his presence. Though I suspected he could have walked through the ward line on his own just as easily.

I scanned the grounds before us. Extensive, unadorned and gently rolling lawns extended out on either side of the driveway, marking the edges of a broad forest of winter-bare trees. Dogwood, red oak, maple, hickory, poplar, birch, and elms occupied well over two hundred acres of the estate.

Up a slight hill toward the center of the forty or fifty acres that had been cleared around it, the ten-thousand-square-foot, three-level main house had been built by my great-grandparents in the Tudor Revival style — a behemoth English country manor in stone and stucco.

“Can you sense whether or not he’s here?” Declan asked.

I didn’t respond. Though I’d used the ward magic at Fairchild Park to send a message to Declan, I wasn’t about to try to do the same in Jasper’s territory.

“It was never a problem for you before,” Declan said, somehow picking up on the thread of my thoughts.

“Only a fool would open herself up to magic controlled by a potential enemy,” Kett said.

“Helpful, vampire,” Declan growled. “And what do your far superior senses tell you?”

Kett untangled his fingers from mine, taking a step away. He slowly pivoted his head, scanning what seemed to be every inch of the property within immediate view, as if he was taking Declan’s sarcasm seriously. “No humans currently occupy the lands within the boundary magic,” he said. “But the magic is saturated in various places. Impenetrable to casual assessment.”

“No humans?” Declan asked. “What the hell else would be here?”

Before Kett gave us a rundown on every woodland creature, rodent, and bird currently nesting on the estate, I interrupted. “The wards on the manor are extensive. Is it safe to assume you also can’t penetrate those at this distance?”

Kett nodded.

“You think he’s lying in wait for us in the house?” Declan asked mockingly. “Giving us a false sense of security by opening the wards?”

“He didn’t open the wards,” I said. “They were still keyed to us.”

Declan grunted noncommittally.

“We’ll have to physically search the house for residual magic,” I said. “As well as the orchard and gardens.”

“And most of the front yard,” Declan said.

“The house wards extend out that far?” Kett asked.

Declan set his mouth grimly.

I glanced at the vampire, ignoring the twist of fear that ran through my belly. “The basement does.”

“Let’s hope to God that Jasmine isn’t in the basement,” Declan muttered.

“Even if Jasper is involved,” I said. “There’s no way he’s inept enough to have kept Jasmine here.”

“That’s debatable,” Declan said. “His megalomania could have easily tipped over the edge of insanity.”

I glanced at Kett, thinking of the contract Jasper had forged with the Conclave — and what that possibly said about my uncle’s state of mind.

Kett nodded almost imperceptibly, as if acknowledging my unvoiced concerns.

I shook off that disturbing thought and began walking up the driveway, focusing on the task at hand. “I’ll take the orchard and gardens,” I said. “Declan, take the front and side yards, including the pool.”

“I’ll search the remainder of the property,” Kett said. Then he all but disappeared.

Declan swore.

“Remember to look for pockets of magic,” I called after the vampire. “We’ll meet up at the house.”

“I doubt he can hear you,” Declan said, stuffing his hands deeply in the pockets of his leather jacket.

“He can hear me.”

Declan snorted, then pressed something into my right hand.

I glanced down at the small stone he’d tucked into my palm. It was etched with a single rune I didn’t recognize.

“Put it in your pocket,” he said. “Trigger it if you get into trouble.”

“My magic doesn’t play well with —”

“Just put it in your pocket, Wisteria. You can’t occupy the moral high ground all the time.”

He veered off to the right across the front yard. “Fifteen minutes. Then meet me at the kitchen doors, whether or not you’re done.”

I tucked the stone into my pocket, more pleased by the gesture than I probably should have been, for the sake of my own emotional welfare.

Declan needed me to find Jasmine. But he’d made his personal boundaries exceedingly clear.

Still, I kept glancing back at him as I continued up the drive. He’d immediately begun to swiftly walk a grid across the front yard, working his way back toward the house.

I focused myself forward, picking up my pace. The manor loomed before me, but I didn’t have to tackle that ten-thousand-square-foot magic-infested monstrosity quite yet. First I would check the orchards and the garden. It seemed highly unlikely that any clues would be found underneath the bare grapevines or apple trees, but we’d learned at a young age to never underestimate our uncle.

His brand of evil always hid in plain sight.

Wide stone pathways twined across the property from the back of the manor, crisscrossing through vegetable gardens and stands of Japanese pagoda trees, lilac, and magnolia. They wound through the expansive grape arbors, shooting off toward the apple orchard in one direction, the outdoor pool in the other, and toward the caretaker’s cottage and other outbuildings at the back of the property.

Back when Jasper was mentoring, his apprentices had often used a golf cart to come and go across the property. But twelve years ago, Declan, Jasmine, and I had just run free whenever we got the chance.

The gardens were bare now, and not simply because it was winter. They appeared to have been allowed to fall fallow. The grape arbor desperately needed to be hacked back. And as I crossed through into the orchard, I almost turned my ankle on the piles of decomposing fruit littering the ground.

The day was chilly but nowhere near freezing. Normally, the entire estate would be blanketed by snow this time of year, and it was disconcerting to observe its outward lifelessness while feeling the vibrant magic underlying every step I took, urging me onward.

The hutch I’d built underneath the apple trees at the southwest edge of the orchard, then had fruitlessly reinforced every spring in the hopes of attracting rabbits, was still standing after more than twelve years. The magic of the estate settled as I neared the site, whispering to me, brushing against my eyes and teasing the palms of my hands.

I ducked underneath the winter-bare branches that had turned unruly without proper pruning, crossing to hunker down by the empty hutch. From where I crouched, I could see the full extent of the back of the manor through the trees. But when the boughs had exploded with apple blossoms in the spring, then leafed out green and hung heavy with fruit throughout the summer, the orchard had been a perfect sanctuary.

Even after that first spring when I’d built the hutch for an injured rabbit we’d rescued. Even after Jasper had found the three of us secretly caring for the rabbit, and had tried to teach us how to kill with our magic. And even after we’d run away to Rose’s and were immediately turned back over to our uncle, we returned to that spot year after year.

I brushed my fingers across the piece of wood I’d angled over a short wall of rocks between two exposed tree roots. It disintegrated underneath my touch.

A wave of shock ran through me. I choked out a sob I hadn’t been aware I was holding back.

I pressed my hand across my mouth, stopping any further expression of pain from getting loose. I squeezed my eyes closed, struggling against the tears suddenly streaming down my face.

This wasn’t the time to give in.

This wasn’t the time to collapse. Wood rotted, returning to the earth. That was just the proper way of things.

The magic of the estate brushed against me more insistently, almost as if cajoling me to play. As if it had missed me, which was ridiculous. That energy didn’t have feelings or thoughts. It just existed. It was simply an accumulation of centuries of Fairchild magic. I should be immune to it.

I wrapped my hand over my white-picket-fence bracelet, feeling the tickle of my own magic from the tiny reconstructions nestled among the platinum charms. I touched the tiny cube that held the reconstruction of Declan, then the cube that held the memory I’d collected of Jasmine.

But I didn’t have to trigger that reconstruction in order to view it. I was standing in the very spot I’d collected it from.

I opened my eyes.

Jasmine, age nine, was crouched beside me, overseeing the feeding of our rescued rabbit. She threw her head back, laughing at something Declan or I had said.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I hadn’t set any candles. I shouldn’t be calling forth magic without a proper boundary. And there was no good reason to be reconstructing that moment again anyway.

I opened my eyes.

Declan, who had just turned ten, swung down from the tree branch above us, landing barefoot in the grass. Jasmine shrieked playfully as she sprang up to defend the sacred space of the rabbit hutch.

With no intent of doing so, I had called forth a reconstruction from the magic teeming around me.

The sequence was already running front to back, as if I’d triggered it simply by walking into the orchard. I knew if I looked down and to the side, I would see myself offering the rabbit a carrot I’d just liberated from the garden.

I was crouched down within my own reconstruction. I was inside my past. And in this moment, we were whole. Undamaged. Free.

Declan had joined us three months previously. We’d just celebrated his birthday and were about to celebrate mine.

But in a few moments, Jasper would find us. With magical power boiling around him, he would cross the orchard grass and teach us the most important lesson of our lives.

Trust no one but each other.

Even now, within the reconstruction, I could feel the magic shifting, preparing for his appearance. It was most likely the sheer power of his residual imprint that made the reconstruction possible in the first place.

Stirring my hands through the magic, I restarted the scene. It swirled around me in a myriad of blues, then Jasmine was crouched beside me, laughing again. She looked so real that I was almost convinced I could reach over, tug on one of her curls, and watch it spring back.

I lifted my hand, idiotically allowing myself to believe.

Declan jumped out of the tree.

Jasmine sprang away, standing between him and me. Laughter rolled through the fruit-laden boughs around us, echoing back to me with a whisper of magic.

I watched the scene again and again, restarting it each time just at the moment before Jasper appeared.

That moment, that day, was the birth of Betty-Sue, Betty-Lou, and Bubba. And no matter how much the bond between us would be manipulated and conditioned by Jasper over the next six years — in that moment, we were pure.

We loved.

And we believed that we were loved, and even cherished, in return. Even Declan must have thought that Jasper cared for him, having rescued him.

And we weren’t wrong.

Not in that moment, anyway.

I replayed the scene, feeding the rabbit, laughing with my younger self, and loving without reservation.

“Wisteria …”

I brushed the voice away, thinking that I’d let the scene play too long and Jasper was intruding.

“Wisteria …”

Someone was trying to call me away … a deep, angry voice. I didn’t want to listen. I pressed my hands over my ears.

“Wisteria!”

Rough hands closed around me, pinning my arms to my sides. Then those hands attempted to lift me, trying to pull me away from the magic of the reconstruction.

I shrieked, twisting and kicking out at my captor.

But he was stronger than me.

It didn’t matter, though. I had the magic. I was the most skilled reconstructionist in the northern hemisphere. No one could take the magic from me.

I reached for the residual, gathering it toward me. Hoarding it over my heart.

The arms around me tightened, dragging my physical body away. But my captor couldn’t have my mind.

At the edge of the reconstruction, Jasper appeared.

I’d lost my focus. I had let him into the scene. He was barefoot, his blond hair long and wild. He boiled with magic, streaking all around him in dark shades of blue.

And we three turned to him, smiling and innocent.

“No!” I screamed. I was sobbing. “No! You can’t have them! I won’t let you have them!”

My captor gripped my arms even tighter, shaking me.

Then he kissed me, harshly.

My hold on the residual magic slipped.

“Please … please …”

He was pleading. His magic danced against my lips.

“Please, please, Betty-Sue. Come back to me. Please, God, don’t leave me again.”

“Betty-Sue …” I whispered.

“Oh, yes. God, yes.”

Tiny pinpoints of pain rained across my face and neck. Just like the sparks I’d seen cascading from his hand. Just like the fireworks he wielded in the other reconstruction I cherished.

Declan.

Declan’s lips. Declan’s magic. Declan’s touch.

And I was Betty-Sue.

I allowed myself to see beyond the magic I’d collected, meeting Declan’s terrified gaze. We were still surrounded by the reconstruction, but all I could see was his golden-hazel eyes. Reaching up, I brushed my fingers across the stubble that covered his jaw.

“I’m here,” I said.

He kissed me again, softer this time. Then he swept me up in his arms, lifting me off the ground and somehow buffering me from the magic that seethed across the estate.

I completely lost my hold on the reconstruction. As it collapsed, the blue sky of the late morning came into focus.

Magic didn’t have feelings, didn’t have moods. But in that brief moment of hazy lucidity, I thought that the estate’s magic might have just made a failed attempt to keep me. Trying to collect me, as I had collected the tiny reconstructions on my bracelet.

“I tried,” I whispered. “I tried to stay.”

“I know,” Declan said. “I know.”

Darkness closed over me, and I fell into a deep slumber.