Threescore & Tequila (Toil & Trouble Book 4) Page 11

  I pick at the bits of bread on the blanket between us, crumbling them between my fingers.

  “It messed you up.” There is something almost like sympathy in his eyes, but it could be a trick of the light.

  “It was definitely life changing.” I swallow hard. “My mom was right. He took away everything that I was. At the end there, I am pretty sure I was insane.”

  “How did you get free?” He gives me a shrewd look. “Was it Oriane?”

  “No.” I can’t quite meet his eyes. “She got tied up with Carly and when she finally got back, Ana was in trouble. Big trouble. Mom didn’t even realize I was gone until it was almost too late.”

  “So, who saved you?”

  “Caterina. Lev’s mother.”

  “The one that hated magic? Why?”

  “Because she finally figured out what Lev was trying to do. She’d made him feel weak his whole life. He wanted payback, but more, he wanted to never fear anyone else ever again. Especially her. His shifter strength wasn’t enough; it could be negated with a simple band of iron. He wanted more. Something powerful and scary.”

  Merry frowns, not getting it.

  “Witch magic, Merry. He wanted to steal it for himself.”

  The frown deepens. “Why didn’t he just use a vamp fang then?”

  “Oh, Lev wasn’t interested in a temporary fix, he wanted to make sure the power was his permanently. Forever.”

  “How in the hell did he expect to do that?”

  “Well.” I laugh, the sound small, hollow. “He wasn’t real sure. But he had lots of theories he wanted to try out. So he did. On me. I was his lab rat.”

  I spilled more blood on that dungeon floor than I did in my dozen worst fights since. Pools of it. He pulled my fingernails out, cut my hair, which was long and blond at the time, something I had been rather vain about. Silly girl. Silly me.

  The bruin subjected me to every form of torture he could devise, trying to find a way to force the magic out. But it was more than that; Lev enjoyed my pain. He reveled in it. Got off on it, literally. Forcing me to watch more than once.

  Gorge rises in my stomach and I force it down with the last swallow of wine. It was a miracle he didn’t rape me, too. The only thing that kept me safe was his terror of soul magic. He was terrified I’d find some way to take his soul if he let himself get that distracted.

  Soul magic repelled and fascinated him by turns. He threatened to lure my family in, to force me to take their souls.

  It would never have worked, but thankfully he didn’t get the chance to try.

  “Once Caterina realized what he was up to she must have known that if he succeeded, she’d likely be his first target. One night when Lev left, his mother came down. She wouldn’t even look at me. Just opened the dungeon door, tossed me the keys and left.”

  I could barely walk by then, but you bet your ass I got out of there. Crawled part of the way. But the instant I was free of those walls, I started to feel better. I wasn’t strong enough to port, so I headed for the road, terrified Lev would find out I was gone and catch up to me first.

  “A carriage nearly ran me over in the road. It was Mom and Ana. They’d finally found out I wasn’t home and realized where I must have gone. Thank the gods they showed. I ended up not being able to use magic for three days.” I clear my throat. “For a while there, I thought it might never come back.”

  Merry shifts, not saying anything, but the look on his face is clear enough. There is no fear for an FTC like the fear of losing magic.

  “So that’s how I learned to trust my mom’s decisions. That’s not all of it—there have been other things, but . . . she’s not wrong. She’s never fucking wrong about shit like that. She used to try and do things the nice way, warn us, cajole us into listening. After what happened to me, she got tough.” I still remember the feel of her arms around me, her sobs in my ear. I’d never seen my mom cry until that day. “Now she doesn’t take those kinds of chances.”

  He opens his mouth, then closes it again, looking pained.

  “Go ahead, Merry,” I say softly. “You know you want to.”

  “Fine.” He clears his throat. “Why didn’t Oriane go back and fix it? Why not save you from that whole experience?”

  “A lot of reasons, actually. The first being the obvious: she can’t save us from everything.” He frowns at this, but I hold up a hand. “And there were things going on with Ana and Carly at that time, too. Delicate and complicated things. Messing with timelines is a dangerous business. She only interfered with Seph’s as much as she did because of what was at stake. And you have no idea what that cost her.”

  “What about what Lev cost you?”

  I stare past him into the darkness. I try not to think about this stuff too much, but once in a while, late at night . . . I wonder just how deliberately my mother spins all those threads. “It’s not as if I died, right?”

  “At least tell me you went back and smoked that motherfucker.” Merry looks at me, his face tight. It’s what any FTC would want. A thirst for revenge runs in our blood, our very DNA, one might say.

  “Both Ana and I wanted to tear that place apart, stone by stone, until there was nothing but dust left.” I shrug. “Mom forbade it.”

  He looks startled. Then furious.

  “She was right. Lev was a favorite of the Firebird Prince and we couldn’t risk that kind of heat. Especially after he and Ana had their falling out. It would have been suicide.”

  “Falling out? Wait, you’re not saying Ana was the one that he . . . ?” His jaw drops.

  “Oh yeah, you’ve heard this one. The prince dumped her. Reneged on his proposal. Ana went kind of nuts.” My smile is thin. “You probably recall an incident concerning the royal family that year. 1848.”

  “Gods, that bomb in Prague that destroyed their summer castle?”

  “It wasn’t a bomb. That was my sister. The Council took pains to hide it.”

  “I’m surprised they let her live.” Merry’s eyes are huge in the darkness, one hand rubbing at his jaw in wonder.

  “It was a close thing.” He has no idea how that played out and I’m not about to share those details. I may be spilling my secrets for reasons I’m not even sure of, but I won’t give up my sister’s, too. “Mom thought it best to keep our heads down after that.”

  His look is disbelieving. “And you obeyed her?”

  “You could say that.” I get to my feet, patting my sword reflexively. I trust Merry—as much as anyone can trust a gnome—but there are some things it’s best never to admit. “A couple months later, it seems Lev was taken by a ruthless team of poachers in the woods. Cut up and skinned. There was barely enough of his body left to bury.”

  I don’t pay any attention to Merry’s grim look of satisfaction. I’m too deep in the haze of memories. After the murder, I ran to the Valkyries and Freya. Not because of what I had done. I didn’t feel the least bit of remorse over Lev’s death. I watched the light leave his eyes and felt nothing. Not even relief.

  No, I ran to the assassins because the rage I carried inside of me was terrifying. Killing Lev hadn’t made it better. It just grew. I was afraid it would explode someday and take my family with it. His threats haunted me, the awful things he wanted to do to witches and my family in particular. Mad as it was, his vision haunts me still. That’s why I’ve been so scared since I heard witches were missing. What if someone else shares Lev’s sick desire?

  I told myself that was insane. Who would do such a thing? Lev is dead and his shitty little dreams with him. But then I remembered Lev wasn’t the sole product of his environment.

  I shake off the shudder that wants to come and get to my feet.

  “Come on, Merry. Let’s see what’s at the end of this goddamn tunnel.”

  17

  I barely control the need to growl. “You have no authority to demand an inquisition here, Cyril.”

  “This is not a demand, only a respectful request,” he says all too easily,
too smoothly, bowing again. A concession that fools me not at all. Requests between royals are almost never refused. “We’d also like to extend the use of the Inferno Palace for the proceedings—”

  The goddamn Inferno Palace? They want us to come to Europe? To bring Persephone and her sisters overseas? My head tries to make sense out of this twisted Rubik’s Cube. Then I abruptly decide it doesn’t matter.

  Screw diplomacy. This is America after all. One thing I rather enjoy about my adopted country is the lack of subterfuge.

  “There won’t be any inquisition. As I said, the witches are not at fault. Herne is. Along with the werewolves who carried out his commands. We’re done here, Cyril.”

  “You refuse to consider our concerns?” He draws back in shock. I can’t tell if he’s faking or not.

  “I have addressed your concerns. All responsible for Georg’s death are dead, the blood debt is paid.”

  “It isn’t paid! It will never be paid.” Agatha’s hiss slices through the room. Darla folds her arms, her agreement obvious in the rigid set of her spine.

  Cyril’s lips tighten in vicious satisfaction. “It seems the family does not agree, Your Majesty. Perhaps you should reevaluate?”

  I turn away from him in disgust, my eyes finding Agatha’s.

  “What do you expect to happen, Aggie? For me to kill them all?” I raise my voice, addressing not only her now, but Darla and the nameless man as well. “Well then, who here will go with me to challenge Jack Frost?”

  Blank looks, several noisy swallows and an eye twitch or two. I shake my head before turning my gaze back to Cyril’s. “Someone really didn’t think this through. Do you imagine Oriane will sit idly by twiddling her thumbs while you think to interrogate her daughters? Or that Styx will allow any of you to lay a claw on Carly?”

  “Styx?” Behind the arrogance, the Russian’s face abruptly takes on a greyish tinge. “You cannot mean the one sometimes called Mishipeshu?”

  “I do.” This is interesting. How the hell does a Russian bruin know our local lake monster?

  He licks his lips. “He is also involved with one of these Gosse witches?”

  “He is. And he is very protective of both her and her family.” Honestly, I don’t have a goddamn clue what Styx is like or how deep his connection to Carly goes. I barely know the man. But it sounds likely enough from what I’ve heard.

  Cyril suddenly sighs, as if bored with our little conversation, but he’s not fooling me. He’s shaking in his boots. And isn’t that interesting? He turns to the dark-haired man. “I think we should report back to . . . the . . . others. We need to go. At once.”

  For a moment, his companion looks beyond pissed, and in that second his name comes to me. Konstantin. I can’t recall his lineage, if I ever heard it, but I know he’s no bruin. He nods smoothly, the emotion on his face gone as if I imagined it. “Of course, my lord.”

  “Thank you for the generous hospitality, Your Majesty.” The venom-laced words are barely out of his mouth before Cyril is taking his leave, his lackey right on his heels. Darla wanders out behind them, looking somewhere between shell-shocked and puzzled.

  I’m right there with her.

  Why would Styx’s name in any context make one directly in line to the throne of the bears turn tail and run? Something is not what it seems here. Before they can disappear, I grab Agatha by the arm and haul her into the kitchen, my voice low.

  “What is really going on here, Aggie?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” But she won’t meet my eyes and her cheeks flush.

  “This has nothing to do with Georg, does it?”

  “It does for me!” she snaps, even as her voice breaks and her eyes fill.

  I believe her. I really do, but . . . “Tell me all of it, Aggie.”

  I can’t. The words ring in my head, not in my ears. I blink, pushing her farther into the shadows by the hallway. What would make Agatha breach such an ingrained rule of bruin society?

  “You were asked to come here, weren’t you?” My whisper is soft, barely more than a breath.

  She looks at me, her face wan.

  More like ordered. Not that I minded. I told them all—more than once!—that mixing with those Gosse witches is the reason Georg is dead. Herne never would have targeted him if it hadn’t been for Seph.

  I disagree. Herne aiming Luna and her pack at Georg was a dispassionate political move that had nothing whatsoever to do with his daughter. Not only did he eliminate someone powerful he knew very well would never come to his side, he was also trying to entangle our people and the wolves in a blood-fest that would have kept our attention off of him, perhaps for years. Explaining this to Agatha is pointless. Her heart needs a scapegoat, and Seph is it.

  Someone finally listened. But . . . I didn’t realize at first why they were so eager to help me.

  “But you did figure it out, didn’t you, Agatha?”

  She blinks, jumping at the sound of a door closing. She pulls away from me.

  “Agatha!”

  Her face is panicked as she darts a look over her shoulder.

  Not exactly . . . Even mentally, her tone is taut and shrill with nerves. Just that he’s trying to get one of the witches back to the Old World.

  “Jett?” My heart goes cold in my chest.

  But it isn’t Jett’s name that Agatha speaks in my head. And when she tells me who really organized this little trip, I realize that whatever is going on here, it’s far, far worse than I could ever have imagined.

  18

  Something glows ahead of us, a faint light at the end of the tunnel at last.

  “Thank the gods,” I breathe, but Merry snorts.

  “It’s at least another mile to the entrance. Maybe two.”

  “Then what the hell is that?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” Merry snaps, glaring at the reddish glow.

  Minutes later, we’re both looking down at something that we don’t like. Something that would make any FTC with an ounce of sense run screaming for the hills.

  It’s a firebird feather, scarlet plumage licked with gold and blue at the edges. It smokes where it touches the ground, smoke that gives off the distinctive smell of copper.

  Ana coming home on the prince’s arm, her cheeks glowing.

  “He gave me a present, Jett.” She opens her palm to reveal a feather on the immaculate white kid glove.

  A feather exactly like this one, cooled just enough to lose its lethality, yet retaining that otherworldly vibrant scarlet. The smell is exactly the same.

  Fuck all.

  I look at Merry. “I know who this is.”

  “I have a sneaking suspicion myself, genius.” His face is pale in the gloomy light. “What do we do?” His deep voice carries more than a trace of panic. “That was left here recently. None of the tunnels have been breached for at least a fortnight.”

  “I know, Merry.” I take a breath and pluck the feather from the dusty earth. It feels like living metal, slightly warm against my skin. Merry flinches as I hold it out. “You need to take this to Ana for me. Tell her what’s going on. Give her this.” My throat closes at the pain I’m going to cause my sister, but there’s no choice. “I know who’s been taking the witches, Merry.”

  “Please don’t say the Firebird Prince. Please for the love of Mother Earth, don’t—”

  “No,” I shake my head, hoping against hope I am right. “I don’t think so. He has no need to hoard his feathers, so why just drop the one? One several days old at that. No,” I repeat firmly. “Viktor’s style is more dramatic. He wouldn’t drop breadcrumbs, he’d just blast us off the face of the earth.” I stare down the tunnel, wishing I had Ana’s ability to scry. “I think this is Anton.”

  It only takes him a second. “Your crazy ex’s brother?”

  “Yes.” Their family was close to the prince back in the day, probably still close enough that stealing a feather or two would be doable. Plus, just seeing one is enoug
h to make most FTCs piss their breeches. Clever asshole. I’m betting this tunnel comes out within a few miles of their castle. “Tell her, Merry. Please.” I don’t know what the hell she can do, but I have to trust her to do it. I’m not leaving Fiona and Julie alone to face what I did.

  No fucking way.

  “You can’t do this by yourself. Are you nuts? How many witches did you say he’s gotten?”

  “They weren’t witches like me, Merry. I’ve got this. I know what I’m walking into now, and Anton was never as strong as Lev. Whatever voodoo that little fucker has gotten his hands on, it can’t hold me now.” I hope.

  “Jett, what if it is the prince himself? What then?”

  Then I die.

  Probably.

  Okay, almost certainly.

  This isn’t Viktor, though; I’m sure of it. But convincing Merry? I don’t have time for that shit. He needs to go. Now.

  I straighten my spine, my words cracking out like a whip to echo against the stone. “I’m not going back. At least two witches are at the end of this tunnel. I’m taking them home one way or the other.”

  Finally, reluctantly, Merry nods. “Okay. But Jett, if you can’t save them, promise me you’ll at least try and save yourself.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” I smile tightly. “I’m one cold bitch, remember?”

  He gives me a weird look. “I don’t know about that. I might have been wrong about you.” He reaches out the hand not holding the feather and squeezes my forearm tightly before speaking a single word in Gnomish. Wichtelwin.

  Friend.

  His blessing sinks into my skin, a six-pointed star glimmering on my skin in cobalt blue before fading away. Now I can roam these tunnels alone, just like whoever was carrying that feather.

  I stare at him, unable to speak, so he does instead. “Watch your ass, Jett.”

  Then he’s gone.

  I take a deep breath and head toward the light, hoping that’s not a metaphor. Anton better watch his ass because I am coming for it.