Forgotten Magic Page 25

  “Say what you will.”

  “Bebe…”

  “Don’t bother with sweet talk, Papa. It won’t work.”

  He stood next to me, not watching, not doing anything but keeping his gaze forward, like mine, on the horizon and the shoreline beyond the window.

  “I have made many mistakes, Janiver.” This wasn’t new information and it wasn’t something he hadn’t already said to me. “Samedi, Mai, what they did to you, was for your protection.”

  “I know that, Papa.” I could no more stay mad at my siblings than I could at Bane. All of them made efforts to protect me despite what I’d been convinced of doing. Sam wanted me with Bane. He wanted us both happy because he had known what that meant once. My brother had held something perfect, a few months of bliss that I would likely never get the chance to understand. He’d still wanted me to have a taste of that. “To see what that feels like,” he’d told me the night before. “I wanted you to know what I still dream about every night.”

  Mai only kept what she knew from me because she knew how it would hurt me to know what our father had done my whole life, just to keep Carter Grant happy.

  But my father, I could not forgive.

  “You’re angry with me, I know this. You may well keep that anger for a long time, bebe.” His gaze was heavy on the top of my head but I wouldn’t look at him. I wasn’t sure I could keep from lashing out if I did. Instead of pushing the issue, my father sat behind me on the bed and the mattress dipped when he rested his elbows on his knees. “I came here trying to build a life, trying like hell to make something of myself. The only way I knew to do that was to serve the higher covens, to hide away the accidents our folk made from the mortals. I suppose I’ve grown so used to serving them, to doing their bidding that I forgot what it was not to agree when they ask too much.”

  “Even if it means your child’s happiness?”

  Papa turned to me then, quick, as though my question was an accusation he hadn’t prepared for. It was a long while before he answered, before he moved at all, but finally the bed shook again and the springs creaked when he stood. “Wi,” he said, sounding defeated. “Even then.” He tapped his feet against the hardwood as he headed for the door, but Papa stopped short, just near the threshold. “One day, Janiver, I hope you forgive me.”

  “One day, Papa, I hope I won’t need to.”

  When that door closed behind him, when I knew that Mai would leave me to my packing, that no one would bother trying to convince me not to leave, only then did I let the tears start and leave quiet tracks down my face. I came to the window seat wishing I could swim out into that lake, that the lines would still sing to me out there as loudly as they had just a week before. There was quick comfort in their song and the temptation it offered. But I had quieted the music by replacing the Elam, tempering the chaos the lines promised to bring. I missed it, that wild, raw energy. I missed the sweet crackle of its power as I climbed closer and closer toward it in the woods.

  And gods how I missed Bane. His smell, his touch, that sweet, thick laugh of his. I missed him like an amputated limb, like something I always had but never really thought to appreciate until it was gone.

  Since he’d shown up drunk and in a rage on my father’s front stoop, only to have Sam and a few coven guards drag him off to parts unknown, I hadn’t heard from him at all. Neither had anyone we knew.

  Hamill, who apparently hadn’t been a traitor after all but had been responsible for the sledgehammer in the store window, had taken, a bit begrudgingly, a position with my father’s business, amends, Mai mentioned Papa saying, for the awful way Ronan had handled the Donaldson arrest. But even in the brief moments Hamill had passed me in the kitchen two nights ago, he hadn’t mentioned Bane or what had become of him.

  It wasn’t until this morning, in fact, that I knew what the day would bring or why the town had gone so busy with activity.

  “A wedding,” I’d overheard Mai telling Sam as they sat down to breakfast. “Last minute.” And then my sister saw me watching her, saw what must have been likely a bit of devastation on my features, because she darted to me, pulled me to her chest, and held me. “Oh, Jani,” she said, “you are the only person I know who makes heartache look good.”

  I hadn’t had a drink in weeks. Not since the night Mai and I watched Sam leading a drunken Bane away from my father’s house. I thought maybe his behavior had more to do with Malak’s punishment than with any betrayal he felt by my hand.

  “Easton Williams will have his hand full,” I’d told Mai when news had reached us of the coven’s decision.

  “Malak can’t be blamed. Not if Joe changed him. Not if that bastard was controlling Malak to get to you.”

  “No,” I’d told my twin, feeling sorry for the younger wizard. His life wouldn’t be his own in the desert, and he’d have to learn to live as an outcast. His own coven would have nothing to do with him now that he was considered a mixed breed creature. No matter how high the coven, that power and wealth wouldn’t save Malak now. “But to be in the desert working for that group…”

  “It’s better he leave than face the wrath of Freya’s family. Selene was livid. Did you see her when Carter Grant told them Malak would only be banished?”

  “I thought she’d claw his eyes out.”

  “I did too. It took Sam and Papa both to keep Selene from attacking the man.” I’d almost been proud of the witch. She seemed uncaring that Grant was coven leader. Malak’s punishment wasn’t enough for her. If I was honest, it wasn’t enough for me, but then I knew the wizard better than she did. I had to believe he’d never meant to hurt anyone.

  But Freya…my sweet, silly friend still haunted me. I tried to drive out the memory of how she’d died, of what had been left of her, with thoughts of the life we’d lived together as girls. Gods, how we’d laughed, how I loved her. Her death, her loss was a wound that would never heal. I would never let it.

  I understood Selene’s rage. It lived it deep inside me even if I still held some small pity for Malak as well.

  “He’ll never be back… It’s a fate worse than death to some,” Mai said as a shudder worked through her arms.

  “Nothing is worse than death.” I wasn’t sure about that, and we’d destroyed a bottle of Bourbon and I hadn’t bothered with it since. It burned too much now.

  When I looked away from the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain, when the bells from St. Andreas sounded, ringing in another joined higher coven match, my stomach dropped and I thought I might vomit. We had not been invited, luckily. As the bells echoed around the Cove and the voices beyond this old Victorian laughed and congratulated each other and went on as though nothing was out of sync, as though my heart wasn’t fracturing into minuscule pieces so vast, so varied that it had no hope of ever being repaired, I packed my bags and decided to leave. Not for the city where my nexus would be blocked from the sweet, constant heartbeat of the ley lines. Not for my sister’s cottage on the outskirts of the Cove where on any given day I could happen upon the man my fractured heart wanted so desperately to claim over and over.

  I packed my bags and made for the beach and the tiny cottage I renamed L’Abri Reach. The Shelter Reach.

  Twenty-Three

  “What, class, do you think Lord Byron meant when he said ‘Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray?’”

  No one had listened to Mr. Matthews all those years ago, and I only thought of it now because the beach in front of me was empty, because my thoughts were scattered between the coming nightfall and the silence that surrounded me. Biloxi at night, right along my beach, was soothing, calm, and lent itself to random thoughts.

  I’d thought of Matthews because the Byron quote had slipped in among the random thoughts.

  “Jani? Any ideas?” Matthew had asked me. It had been the wrong day to ask me about Byron. I never liked the poet or his work. I especially didn’t like him when Bane kept g
laring at Nicky Collins for asking me to borrow a pen.

  “Not really, Mr. Matthews,” I’d answered, becoming increasingly interested in the doodle on my page and the loop that arched into the cursive B.

  “No, Jani? You don’t have an opinion about Byron’s use of nature in his prose? Specifically storms…”

  “His use of storms,” I grumbled, making that B bigger, extending it until it formed a heart. “It’s predictable. It holds no weight.”

  “Storms?”

  “Storms do,” I’d answered my teacher, glancing at him when he cleared his throat. “But he used rainbows. Storms, specific storms, would have been better. Thunder, midnight.”

  “Why thunder and midnight?”

  I hadn’t thought about my response. Just then Bane leaned on his arms, staring right at me as I spoke, heating up my skin with one glance. “It…it’s when magic is the most potent.”

  That time I looked at Bane, returning his grin, getting a rare smile that made me feel a little drunk, punch drunk at least.

  “Ah. I see what you mean. Magic, love…”

  Matthews had gone on and on, probing, questioning about Byron, and I’d spent the rest of the class period with my eyes closed, pretending to sleep just to burn the image of Bane’s smile into my lids.

  The lights from the dock down the beach flickered on, brought my attention away from my thoughts, away from the beach and the water that went on and on, stretching out into the Gulf. Sunset would bring with it kids on their Thanksgiving break, drinking, running along the beach, avoiding the cops cruising up and down the shoreline. I didn’t need the noise or the hassle, and pulled my canvas sneakers from the makeshift seat on the sand. I took a moment to dust more of the sparkling white sand from my jeans and hoodie.

  The temperatures hadn’t been truly cool yet, and the holiday was turning out to be a mild one, one that I’d spend on my own, painting the molding and trim in the den of my newly purchased cottage.

  I slipped through the gate, trailing sand behind me, and smiled at the last remaining fireflies that flew near the bird bath at the edge of the fence line. The cottage was old, built back when Craftsmen were cheap and everyone got a GI loan to purchase their first home. It had survived Katrina, though just barely, and needed a new roof, mending on the back fence, and the chippy yellow paint needed a fresh coat. The crow I ate to cash Bane’s check was bitter, got stuck between my teeth, but I’d gobbled it down just to get this place and out of my father’s debt. I needed to start again, be away from the Cove, from the past and the sins that wouldn’t let me rest at night.

  That’s what I told myself—that this cottage would allow me to begin a new life. I’d douse myself in a lot of elbow grease and DIY sweat equity, and eventually I’d leave the Cove behind me. Someday I might actually believe it.

  It was my mantra—that this cottage would be a new beginning—and I repeated it to myself as I stepped up onto the porch, as I opened the screen door, and as I put my key into the lock. “A new beginning…” And then, shifting my gaze to the movement at my right, that mantra got replaced with a loud, shrieking curse. “Mother fuc—”

  “Jani! Wait! It’s me,” Bane said, throwing up a shield with his hands as my hex ripped right over his head.

  “Are you crazy?” I screamed, slamming the screen door, my gaze flitting out onto the empty beach and down the sidewalk. “I could have…” He stepped into the light and I went mute. Just seeing his face, the dark circles under his eyes, still with beautiful blue irises, silenced me stupid. “What…what are you doing here?” I said, stepping back when he moved forward.

  “I came to see you.”

  “Why?” I asked, not thinking.

  Bane seemed not to expect that. He scratched his chin and lowered his shoulders, a defeated, tired movement. “Can I…can we go inside?”

  I didn’t think about how that might look. It didn’t occur to me that if we were in the Cove and Bane, a newly married man, came into my home with no one else to chaperone, that there would be gossip and lots of it. But this wasn’t the Cove, and I didn’t care who talked. Hell, I didn't care if anyone was watching, period. At the moment the only thing I did care about was asking why he looked so tired and how the hell he knew where I’d be.

  “Excuse the mess,” I told him, stepping around half-empty paint cans and tarps smudged with gray and white paint. “I’m renovating,” I explained, leading him inside.

  I’d spent a majority of the past week sanding and cleaning, and had finally moved on to painting. I’d tackled the monstrosity of harvest gold in the kitchen and dining room and had started in on the boring beige walls of the den this morning. Bane followed me, his gaze moving around the room, squinting at the rubbish rags and dried paint brushes.

  “You’re doing this by hand?” he asked. I nodded, turning toward him by the large bay window at the front of the living room. “With no magic?” He frowned when I lifted my eyebrows, when instead of answering, I crossed my arms. His frown deepened. “But that will take you ages.” I narrowed my eyes and he shook his head. “Why are you doing it the hard way?”

  “Because it gives me time to think.”

  Bane nodded, once again looking around the room, idly scratching his chin as though he needed some mild distraction to help him think. “Well, if that’s how you want to do it, I can respect that.” He pointed toward the hallway. “How many bedrooms?”

  “Two down here, two upstairs.”

  Bane nodded again, stepping away from me. “You’ll need to go into town so we can fetch some trim to replace the rotten wood along the corner of the front porch and fencing material as well. I did some rebuilding in New Orleans after the storm. I know my way around a hammer and nails.” He stepped toward the window, moving his head to get a better look at the garden. “There isn’t a thing I know about weeds or planting, but I trained with a Scottish wizard five years back and he taught me fey magic for growing vegetables. Can’t be that different to making your roses climb.”

  “Bane.”

  He kept watching the garden, along the back fence, mumbling to himself as he looked out onto the property. “If you want to do it without magic, it’ll take more time, of course, and you might not be ready to open by spring…”

  “Bane.” He stepped back when I touched his arm, as though that slight graze of my fingers along his bicep burned him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Helping you.”

  For a second I couldn’t read the expression on his face, the way he lifted his eyebrows, how his mouth tightened and the muscles around it thinned out his bottom lip. Then Bane licked his lips, looking down at my hands before he looped my pinky with his. “I want to help you, as much as I can. I want…” He dropped my pinky to thread our fingers together. “I want to see if this melding, if you and me, if there’s something there.”

  “I’m sorry?” A small wrinkle worked between his eyebrows when I released his hand and took a step back. “That’s not going to happen.”

  I’d seen Bane Iles angry. I’d seen him turned on, amused, utterly livid. I had never seen him completely stunned, incapable of forming words. He was just then watching me, frown set, mouth tight. “Is it…are you laughing at me?” He tilted his head, his eyebrows set so stiff now wrinkles formed on his forehead. “You’re…you’re mocking me?”

  “I would never,” I swore, lifting my chin.

  “But…you don’t want…”

  He couldn’t be serious, despite that expression, despite his shock, there was no way Bane could actually expect me to take him in. Not after the bells I heard. “I would never want another woman’s husband. No matter who he is.”

  His mouth moved, opening, closing as though something unspeakable, shocking passed from his mind but couldn’t quite make it past his lips.

  “Husband?” I nodded, stepping back when he moved forward. “Whose husband?”

  “Um, Caridee’s?”

  “Who told you I got married?”

 
He ignored the glare I gave him and the quick slap of my hand against his arm when he reached for me. “Was I not supposed to know?”

  “Janiver Benoit, please shut it.”

  “I will not, don’t you dare…” But he was already kissing me, taking, keeping my resisting fists from his shoulders as I swung at him until I was against the wall and Bane’s low whispered hex made my mouth stiff and motionless.

  “Cut those eyes at me all you like, little witch. I don’t care.” He laughed when I glared at him, barely containing his amusement when a growl vibrated in my throat. “Hush now,” he said, moving my face up just inches from his mouth. “I am no one’s husband.” Another glare, this one I was certain full of doubt, and Bane’s smile widened. “On my father’s grave, I’m not married.” He leaned close, moving his fingers over my face. “I refused the arrangement. With Malak sent off to the desert as recompense for his crimes, my uncle had no choice but to find an alternative. Your father, it turns out, knew of a healer in from Barataria Bay, an old witch with magicks no one has used in decades. He’d mentioned her to my uncle before, but the old wizard had never been so desperate. He agreed to see her, then. Soon she convinced him she was powerful. He took all her treatments, allowed her to work all her charms and he was able to heal enough of the illness that he could produce an heir.”

  “He could…” I blinked, flaring my nostrils when Bane’s words sunk in. “You’re saying he can…”

  “Before, the illness prevented him from…performing. Now, he can. So, he married Caridee himself. When it was made known that he’d fathered Joe illegitimately, he was only too eager to provide the coven with a true heir, one of his own making. And Cari, it seems, was all too happy to oblige. My uncle is very free with his wallet. She is already three weeks along. Their son will be the coven’s leader when he comes of age.” When I only blinked at him, eyes round, looking amazed, I was sure, Bane released the hex from my mouth. “It’s your fault, you know? All of this.”