Читать книгу The Witch's Quest - Michele Hauf - Страница 11

Chapter 3

Two months later

Valor walked down the street, her destination was the gas station on the corner. She had a craving for something sweet and icy that at least resembled food and that would probably give her a stomachache. It was what she deserved.

When she spied the classic black Firebird cruise by, she picked up her pace and then halted on the sidewalk but a dash from the parking lot where the car had pulled in to stop before a hardware store. That was Kelyn Saint-Pierre’s car. His brother Blade had fixed up the 1970s’ vehicle with spare parts and a wicked talent for auto body reconstruction. She knew it was Kelyn’s car because she’d been trying to speak to him for months. Ever since their harrowing encounter in the Darkwood.

When he had sacrificed his wings for her.

She wanted him to know she had not taken that sacrifice lightly. That it meant something to her. But she didn’t have a clue how to tell him that. To not make it sound like a simple yet dismissive “Hey, thanks.” And she’d been racking her brain for ways to repay him. But how did one offer something equal to the wings that were once his very identity?

She’d researched faeries and their wings. Wings were integral to their existence; when faeries lost them, they lost so much more. Like their innate strength and power. And sometimes even the ability to shift to small size, as the majority of faeries could do. And Kelyn could never again fly.

The man had to be devastated. And now, as she watched him get out of his car and stride toward the hardware store, Valor couldn’t push herself to rush after him. But she had to. She owed him.

A tight grip about her upper arm stalled her from taking another step toward apologizing to Kelyn. Valor turned and shrugged out of Trouble Saint-Pierre’s pinching hold. Built like an MMA fighter, the man exuded a wily menace that also disturbed her need to give him a hug. They had once been friends.

Had been.

“What?” She rubbed her arm. He hadn’t been gentle.

“You looking to talk to my brother?”

“Yes,” she said defensively.

Bravery sluiced out of her heart and trickled down to puddle in her combat boots. Trouble was the sort of man who could be imposing even when asleep. The two of them had once been drinking buddies. Now he avoided her as much as Kelyn did.

“I have to—”

“No, you don’t,” he interrupted with that gruff but commanding tone that warned he meant business. “You stay the hell away from my brother. You’ve done him enough damage.”

“But I want to apologize. I know I’ve hurt him. Trouble!”

He shoved her aside and strode toward his brother’s car, but as he stalked away, he turned and thrust an admonishing finger at her. And Valor flinched as if he’d released magic from that accusing fingertip.

She would not give up. There had to be a way to get Kelyn’s wings back for him. And she wouldn’t rest until she did.

Two months later

It had now been four months since that fateful night in the forest, and Kelyn had survived the loss with his head held high and his dignity intact. He could no longer shift to small size, nor could he fly. The faery sigils had disappeared from his wrists and chest, rendering his magic ineffective. But he still had his dust and—well, that was about it. His strength? Gone. When once he could beat Trouble at arm wrestling in but a blink, now his brother did his best not to win, even though Kelyn knew he was faking.

And he’d lost his connection to nature, which had once been as if his very heartbeat. Senses attuned to the world, he’d navigated his surroundings by ley lines and had listened to the wind for direction and tasted water in the stream for clues to weather and more. As a result of losing his wings, he now always felt lost.

But he wouldn’t bemoan his situation or complain or even suggest to others what a terrible life he now had. Because he was thankful for life. Such as it was.

Sitting in the corner of the local coffee shop, nursing a chai latte, he scanned the local job advertisements in the free paper he’d grabbed before walking inside. Much as the Saint-Pierre children had never needed to work, thanks to their parents’ forethought to invest for each of the five of them when they were born, he now needed...something. He hadn’t volunteered at The Raptor Center since losing his wings. It felt wrong to stand in the presence of such awesome nature and feel so lacking. And with the proper care, those birds could heal and then fly away. Something he could never hope to do again.

So, what could a faery who wasn’t really a faery anymore do with himself? His utter uselessness weighed heavily on his shoulders. He needed to do something. To move forward, occupy his thoughts and forget about what haunted him every second of every minute of every day.

Lately, he wasn’t even interested in women. Because though he never revealed he was faery to the mortal women he had dated, he still felt different. Set apart. And he couldn’t get excited about going to a bar or dancing or even a hookup when that missing part of him ached.

It did ache. His back, where his wings had been severed, put out a constant dull throb. Always reminding him of the wings he once had.

Closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the café wall, he zoned out the nearby conversations and set the paper on the table. He needed a new start. But he wasn’t sure what that implied or how to go about it. Two of his brothers were werewolves involved with their packs. No faeries allowed. And while his interests had tended toward the martial arts and archery, he didn’t feel inspired.

When a rustle at his table alerted him, he didn’t open his eyes. It was probably the barista refilling his chai. She did it at least twice on the afternoons he parked himself here in the sunny corner away from the restrooms and bustle of the order line.

But when he didn’t smell the sweet spices of fresh chai infusing the air, he opened one eyelid. And sat up abruptly, gripping his empty paper cup and looking for an escape route.

“Kelyn, please, give me two minutes. Then I’ll leave. Promise.”

Valor Hearst sat across the small round table from him, her palms flat on a half piece of blue paper that hadn’t been there before. Every hair on Kelyn’s body prickled in anger and then disgust. And then...that deep part of him that had compelled him to protect her in the forest emerged and he relaxed his shoulders, allowing in a modicum of calm. And desire.

He nodded but didn’t speak.

“Trust me,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to speak to you ever since...” She looked aside, as did he. No one in the town knew what paranormal secrets the two possessed. “But I was scared. And so freaked. And then your brother told me to stay away from you. But I was determined. And now I have it.”

She patted the blue paper. “I know how to get your wings back.”

* * *

“First...” Valor shifted on the metal café seat, uncomfortable and nervous. The blond faery eyed her with a mix of what she guessed was anger and revulsion. Well deserved. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t—” he tensed his jaw for a moment, then finished “—say that.”

“But I am. Kelyn, I’m sorry for what happened in the forest. It was my fault. I am so grateful to you. And you shouldn’t have done it. You should have let me die. I’m just...so, so sorry.”

“It was a choice I made. You did not influence me or have a part in that decision one way or another. So stop saying sorry.”

“Fine. I’ll stop with the s word. But listen to me.”

“You have approximately thirty seconds remaining of the requested two minutes.”

So he was going to be a stickler? Again, his annoyance was well deserved.

“I can help you get back your wings,” she said. “I found a spell to open a portal to Faery. It merely requires collecting a few necessary ingredients, and then, voilà! We’re in!”

“We’re in?” He calmly pushed aside the paper cup and leaned forward so they could speak in confidence. Valor smelled his fresh grassy scent and wondered if it was a faery thing or just innately him. Never had a man smelled so appealing to her. And generally a little auto grease or exhaust fumes was all it took for her. She was glad he hadn’t stormed out of the café yet. Which he had every right to do. “Do you think I have the desire to trust you?” he asked. “To work alongside you in a fruitless quest? To...to breathe your air?”

She had expected him to hate her. So his harsh words didn’t hurt. That much. Yes, they hurt. But they could never harm her as much as she had hurt him.

“I think you should do everything in your power to bring me down,” she offered to his question regarding why he should care. “To expose me to humans, if that’s your thing. Whatever you do, you have every right to hurt me in return.”

“I don’t hurt women. I don’t take vengeance against one who has not moved to harm me in the first place. I don’t...want to believe your silly magic can do as you say.”

“My magic is not silly.”

“It got you pinned in the Darkwood.”

“Yes, well, state the obvious. That was my constant need to prove how stubborn I can be, not my magic. I know now to stay away from that place. By all that is sacred and the great Doctor Gregory House, I have learned my lesson.” She tapped the blue paper on the table and leaned in again to speak in quieter tones. “But this spell...it’s ancient. I know its source. It will work, Kelyn. Please, give me a chance to help you get back what was taken from you. I want to help you.”

“I don’t need your restitution, witch.” He stood and grabbed the cup. Turning, with a toss, he landed it in the wastebasket eight feet away near the counter display of half-price cookies.

Valor jumped up to stand before Kelyn, blocking his exit. Yet she stood as a mere blade of grass before his powerful build and height. “That kiss you gave me when I thought I was going to die?”

He tilted his head, his eyes—violet, the color of faeries—showing no emotion.

“It changed me,” Valor confessed. “I can’t say how. It won’t matter to you. But it did. And I haven’t stopped trying to find the answer for you since then.” She pressed the paper to his chest, but he didn’t take it, so she tucked it lower, in the waistband of his hip-hugging gray jeans. “Read it. It’s a list of ingredients required to conjure the portal spell. When you’re ready to give it a try, you know where to find me.”

And she turned and walked out, forcing herself not to look back. To call out to him to please make life easier for her by allowing her to try and make his life what it once was. She hadn’t told him that she hadn’t gone a single night without reliving that kiss before exhaustion silenced those wistful dreams. And that she wished everything had been different, that she’d never entered the Darkwood on her own personal yet fruitless quest. A quest that hadn’t been accomplished, and one she’d not dared to attempt since.

When the universe spoke, she listened.

Kelyn Saint-Pierre was a remarkable man. And she might have blown her chances of ever having him trust her. So she crossed her fingers and whispered a plea to the goddess that he might want to give the spell a try. For his sake.

And, okay, for her peace of mind, as well.

* * *

The witch left a trail of sweet honey perfume in her wake. Kelyn had heard she was a beekeeper and had, more than a few times, almost gotten up the courage to visit her and ask about beekeeping. Before, that was.

Before was the only way to define his relationship with Valor now. Before he’d lost his wings, and before she’d hooked up with Trouble. Before was when he’d crushed on her and had wanted to ask her out. Now was, well, now everything was After. Which was a ridiculous way to go through life.

Why couldn’t he put the witch out of his brain and move forward?

He knew the answer to that. And it was probably scrawled on the piece of paper that she’d tucked in his jeans. He tugged it out and crumpled it into a ball. Raising his arm to make a toss toward the wastebasket, he suddenly curled his fingers about the crunchy paper.

The answer as to why he couldn’t move forward was that he wasn’t done with her yet. They’d been thrown together in the Darkwood by forces beyond their control. And ever since that day, he hadn’t been able to not think about her. He thought about that desperate kiss. A lot. It had been different from any other kiss he’d taken or had been given by a woman. Weirdly claiming. And achingly right.

He’d never felt that way about a kiss before. Of course, that was Before. Now, if he couldn’t accept himself, how could he possibly accept another person into his life, no matter if it was to help him find something lost or for something so simple as another kiss?

He wanted to be brave like his brothers. To be looked up to and admired by women, also like his brothers. He wanted to know his place in this world and walk it with confidence. While all his life he’d found himself standing to the side watching his brothers, until his wings had been stripped away, he’d never felt this heavy weakness and lack that he now did.

Stryke and Trouble were strong, virile werewolves. His brother Blade was a vampire who had a touch of faery in him. Blade even had a set of dark wings. But he hadn’t brought them out in Kelyn’s presence since he’d lost his wings. Even his sister, Daisy Blu, possessed a strength he admired.

What was he without wings? Self-acceptance was impossible without those very necessary parts of him. They were limbs. And a man who lost a limb truly did lose a part of himself.

Walking outside the café, he uncrumpled the blue paper ball and spread it open. On the top was written in red ink To Invoke a Portal Sidhe and below that an ingredient list. Werewolf’s claw, water from an unruly lake, a kiss from a mermaid, occipital dust from the Skull of Sidon and true love’s first teardrop.

Sounded like a whole lot of bullshit to him. What, exactly, was an unruly lake? But he knew witch magic was weird and steeped in millennia of practice and tradition. And while faeries in the know could access their homeland by opening a portal in a manner to which Kelyn was not privy, there probably did exist a spell to open a portal by other means. And his mother, while she had been born in Faery, had come to this realm decades earlier and could not return, so he hadn’t bothered to ask her help. No need to worry her uselessly.

But what, then? Just wander into Faery and collect his wings from the Wicked One to whom he’d freely given them? He’d made a deal: his wings for unpinning Valor. He wouldn’t renege on a deal.

As he’d said to Valor, it wasn’t her fault. He’d made the choice to make such a sacrifice all by himself.

Eyeing the steel mesh garbage can that stood before the café on the sidewalk, Kelyn held a corner of the blue paper. A soft wind fluttered it like...a wing.

Gulping down a swallow, he shoved the paper in a back pocket and strode toward his car.

A week later

Kelyn still hadn’t contacted her. Valor set aside the tin smoking can and leaned against the cinder block wall that edged the rooftop where she kept three stacked beehives. The smoke kept the bees docile so she could check that the queens were healthy and laying eggs. This fall she would have to separate the hives because they had expanded. She’d end up with five hives, which was awesome. And while bees that lived in the city tended to create a diverse and delicious honey, she was rapidly running out of space. She needed a country home, like her beekeeping mentor, Lars Gunderson, where she could manage a larger quantity of bees.

The sun was bright and she needed to cool off, so she left the smoker on the roof and skipped down the iron stairs to her loft. It was set on the third floor of an old factory building. The lower two levels were currently being refurbished and remodeled into apartments. When she’d moved in years earlier, the place was private and vast. But with neighbors soon to occupy the lower floors and the whole neighborhood turning yuppie, her desire to start looking at country real estate increased.

Tugging the heavy corrugated steel door, which was set on a rolling track like a barn door, she shut it behind her. She pulled off the white button-up shirt she’d pulled on over her fitted gray T-shirt. Dark colors attracted bees and angered them, so she always wore white to the roof.

She whistled. Mooshi popped his head up from behind the couch, moving ever so slowly on his adventure through the wild. Cats. So independent sometimes she had to wonder who owned who.

Running her fingers through her hair, she vacillated between bending over the spell books she had to search for a possible coercion spell and calling Sunday to see if she wanted help today with modifying the ’67 Corvette Stingray engine. Valor was on a two-week vacation from the brewery, which she appreciated but also always found hard to comply with.

How to get Kelyn to pay attention to her and at least give her a chance at the spell? And why couldn’t she simply let this go?

“Restitution,” she muttered. The word he’d used so cruelly against her.

Yes, she wanted to pay him back for the horrible thing that had happened because of her. No matter what kind of spin he put on it, if she had not been in that position in the Darkwood, he would never have been faced with having to sacrifice his wings.

“What should I do, Mooshi?”

A rap at her door decided for her. “That’s what I’ll do.” She would answer the door.

Maybe it was Sunday. Her best friend, a cat shifter, had promised to stop by one day this week with some red velvet Bundt cakes from the new café in town and a whole lot of car chatter. Sunday was one of her few female friends. Most often Valor got along with men because...she was just one of the guys.

She slapped a hand to her chest. No, she wasn’t going to recall that awful thing that had been said to her. The words that had sent her into the Darkwood on a desperate mission.

She was over that now. For good or for ill.

“Definitely not good,” she muttered, and tugged open the sliding door.

Kelyn stood before the threshold holding the blue half sheet of paper on which she’d scrawled the spell ingredients. He raked his fingers through his messy hair and met her gaze with his piercing violet eyes. “Let’s do this.”