The Problem with Promises Read online

  “That is a myth,” Trowbridge said, his tone as cold and harsh as driving sleet.

  “No. It’s not,” she said. “And it’s what we should have been given for the last ward we put over this pond. But we were tricked, weren’t we? We didn’t know that Mannus had a Fae in the background.”

  “I could kill you right now, right here, bitch,” said Trowbridge.

  “But you won’t. The Alpha of Creemore doesn’t call on old friends to visit near midnight unless he’s desperate.”

  “C’est vrai,” said Elizabeth.

  Natasha lifted her eyes to meet Trowbridge’s fury with a cool that belied her earlier heat. “One Tear for one ward.”

  “That’s not on the table,” my lover said, his voice a low threat.

  Revenge is sweet, isn’t it?

  The tempting probability of it had swollen Natasha’s chest. She tipped back her head, and said, really slowly, “You better think about your options, Alpha. Because there is no other coven to turn to. The rest of them want to play it safe—keep it all goodness and light. And none of them are interested in dealing with your pack because they’ve seen what happened to us.” She issued him a smile laced with equal parts satisfaction and surety. “Your mate’s going to adjust the balance sheet. She’s going to pay the bill that your kin should have paid. She’s going to give me a piece of the Fae, crystallized into a diamond. It’s the only thing I’m interested in and the only thing our coven will bargain for.”

  Then she turned to me and stared at my dry eyes.

  Tell her you don’t have them.

  A lie. One that I couldn’t carry off because I could see it in her eyes. She knows. How did she know I always carried them, safe in the small leather pouch, hanging from the end of the golden chain belt girthing my hips?

  She knows.

  About those perfect six stones birthed in acute pain. Five of them squeezed from my mother’s eyes, one of them from my own—brought forth as I lay on Cordelia’s bathroom floor, Trowbridge’s hip warm against mine, knowing that I was falling in love.

  They were precious beyond words. Personal. Private. Oh Goddess, to have one of those corrupt women touching them. Owning it. Using it to absorb evil.

  No, no, no.

  Trowbridge reached for me, and pulled me close. Arms wrapped around me, one shoulder protectively hunched against the witches’ sight line so that I could rest my cheek against his chest in relative privacy.

  He knows how I hate being watched. How does he know that?

  We’ve spent so little time together.

  His breath warmed my ear. “Forget it,” he whispered. “They’re just leveraging for more money.”

  I shook my head. I truly did know this type of woman, having lived with one. The Natashas of the world don’t take a perceived grievance lightly. The cost to fix a wrong to a woman such as she would always outweigh the value of the original offense.

  “We’ll call the portal without a ward,” he whispered into my ear.

  My breath had nowhere to go. It came out of my lungs in a slow exhale, hit his shoulder, and then returned to warm my face. On it, I smelled sweet syrup and Trowbridge kisses. “The pack will know that we’ve gone. And they’ll be waiting for us when we come back. They’ll see my brother—they’ll know it’s all been a lie. I’ve seen them turn—”

  “I’m an Alpha.”

  “There’s too many of them to nail with your flare all at once, Trowbridge.” I swallowed against the knot swelling in my throat.

  “I can find another coven.”

  “Not in time,” I said miserably. I pushed away from the security of his hard chest. Slid my hand beneath my waistband, until my fingertips encountered the thin supple links of the chain.

  The Fae inside me was angry. I could feel the whip of her annoyance, and worse, I could sense her dark interest in the magic these women promised.

  Trowbridge smoothed my hair in a gesture filled with impotent hurting as I bent to examine the pouch. The leather was soft and worn, embellished with silver filigree. Gently I teased open the delicate strings. The stones seemed to wink at me from the bottom of the pouch. Six pale pink. One bright and clear.

  Which Tear could I part with?

  Trowbridge sucked his breath through his teeth as I pulled out the one I’d shed for him. It had hurt, knowing myself to be falling in love. A small agony as the tear had welled in my ducts.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and I knew he meant it, even if I wasn’t sure what he was saying sorry for.

  I turned to Natasha and held out my closed fist.

  She moved closer, until I could smell the sweat of her body and the rot of her soul. “You can’t stay while we set the ward,” she said. “Your magic will interfere with ours.”

  I dropped it into her palm and watched with dull eyes as she folded her fingers over the bits of him and me, and then, because I couldn’t stay, not without birthing another frozen tear, I said, “I’m going inside.”

  * * *

  Though of course, I didn’t. Even though Trowbridge told me to lock the door until he was through with them, I was loath to go into the house, where Anu waited. So instead I sat down on the back porch’s bottom stair, and stared at them from a distance while I slowly pried up a long sliver of crumbling pine from one of the rotting stoop’s risers.

  You’d think it wouldn’t take long to cast a ward.

  You’d be wrong.

  An hour passed—the owl roosting in the beech tree hooted three times; a mouse darted along the line of overgrowth that edged the woods; something small and unidentified burrowed under a layer of leaves; and my ass started to send “damp” and “chilled” progress reports to my nervous system.

  And still, the witches were working on setting the wards. Evidently calling up enough magic to envelop the pond and surround the cliffs in a ward was a complicated business. The first step was to establish the area that Trowbridge wanted protected by the ward. Thus, he, Cordelia, and the fat one had done a survey along the edges of the cliff running along the ridge of his family’s property followed by a precarious duckwalk along the thin crumbling precipice that bordered the parameters of the cemetery—I’m thinking that was Trowbridge’s punishment for the witch’s general insolence—and then finally across my family’s land and down our path all the way to the small pebble-strewn beach.

  Natasha had made a big deal of using her walking stick to sketch a line in the earth.

  Show-off.

  The skinny one—“Aleezahbet”—had chosen not to walk beside them, opting instead to parallel their progress around the property. Strangely enough, of the two witches, she looked more engaged with the whole see-me-cast-a-spell process. Her mouth was moving, and her gaze seemed distant.

  As the foursome had slowly inched past my porch, I asked innocently, “What’s she doing?” Mostly because I wanted to poke Natasha with a bear stick. She would have been far happier if I’d truly gone inside the house.

  The woman needed to learn to live with disappointment.

  Natasha had said, “The leylines are a web beneath the soil. She’s searching for the strongest ones.”

  Ah, yes. The infamous leylines.

  A tad grittily, Natasha had elaborated. “As Elizabeth follows them, she becomes a satellite tower, beaming the coven’s power up through this plane on the earth. I, in turn, feed from her power. We are all connected.”

  Hogwash.

  Trowbridge had given her his own searing glance of disbelief. “I’ve got limited patience for this shit. This ward better be functioning—”

  “It will be.”

  “I want a demonstration of that before you leave this place.”

  “You shall,” the older witch had said, looking straight into his blue eyes.

  My mate’s nostrils had flared.

  He could have scent-tested for a lie all he wanted. This woman was the mixologist of fibs. She knew exactly how to layer truth with falsehood, wicked ounce by ounce, so that all you saw w
as a seemingly innocuous cocktail. Smelled right. Tasted right. Felt bad in the belly.

  I may have just given my first Tear to a bunch of no-good charlatans.

  That insight in itself should have been enough to make me want to hit the maple syrup. But what really added to my misery was the fact that Fae-me was on high alert. Magic was being stirred, and she was acutely interested. Alive and speculating. Assessing things I could not understand with eyes far keener than mine. I could sense her working out a problem, as if it was string in her hand into which she kept tying and untying the same knot.

  Was it me? Or did the air feel tighter? Thinner in oxygen?

  I pulled out Merry, and cupped her in my cold hand to borrow a bit of her heat. My amulet let out a measure of energy that instantly made me feel warmer, but she didn’t make me feel calmer, the way Trowbridge did. Even when things were bad, having him in the same room made me feel … safer.

  I got up, dusted off the pine slivers from my jeans, and headed for the lookout point to check on the ward status. Down by the pond, forward progress seemed stalled. The four of them were by the water’s edge, examining the little creek that fed into the pond. Cordelia’s mouth was a thin grim line, her arms folded. Their voices carried well over the water.

  Natasha said, “This creek wasn’t here last time.”

  “It’s always been here,” said Trowbridge flatly.

  She scowled at it, then shook her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t seal a ward over a stream. It doesn’t matter if it’s only two feet deep. Magic won’t settle over moving water.”

  “So I’ll get a couple of two-by-fours. Lay them flat over the stream,” said Trowbridge.

  “It can’t be processed wood,” she said, shaking her head side to side. “It will interfere with the—”

  “Hocus-pocus,” said Cordelia sourly.

  Natasha’s jowls shook as she pursed her lips. “Our talent.”

  Then she pointed over to the remains of a long dead maple. Its trunk lay split in two, half covered by vegetation on the slope of the hill. “That will do. Use them to make a bridge over the stream. But you’ll have to seal any chinks between them with mud, or the ward won’t set.”

  “Mud?” Trowbridge repeated. By the light of the lamp I could see his expression. Testy, he was. Very testy. “Why can’t we just put a tarp over the logs?”

  “It must be organic.”

  The gas lamp highlighted Trowbridge’s sharp cheekbones. He stared at the duckweed-choked water with acute distaste.

  “I’m out,” said Cordelia.

  “No you’re not,” he growled, turning for the hill. “Help me with these logs.”

  She straightened her cardigan. “This is a Simon Chang.”

  “I’ll buy you two new tops. One in pink.” Trowbridge used his boot to flatten the burdocks that grew thick on the slope. He bent them at the base, creating a passage for Cordelia. “One in a blue to match your eyes—”

  “You’ll buy me four.” She huffed as she stepped gingerly into the path he was making for her. “In fine wool. With pearl buttons. From Holt Renfrew.”

  He half turned. “Can’t I pick up a few sweaters from the Bay?”

  “Four,” she sniped. “From Holts.”

  The witches had requisitioned one of the gas lamps and had climbed halfway up the narrow trail that led to Trowbridge’s house. A small landing of sorts had been created by a huge flat outcrop of rock.

  Elizabeth put the lamp on it and shed her coat. “We will need absolute silence as we concentrate. Nothing must interrupt us, or break our focus. We are calling to elemental magic.”

  Mortals playing with that stuff?

  “It is powerful here,” Natasha murmured. “Stronger than I’ve felt before. If we lose control of it, it will be very bad.”

  “How bad?” Cordelia turned.

  “Bad,” Nastasha said baldly.

  “Wonderful,” Cordelia drawled.

  “Come on, Cordie.” Trowbridge gave her a little shove. “The sooner we make their damn bridge, the sooner they can enclose the pond with the ward.”

  Chapter Four

  Casperella was having a spook-out. There was no other word for it. The Fae ghost kept bouncing from end to end of her little home on the spit of cemetery land that overlooked the pond, for all the world resembling one of those shameful Canadian flags that had been left out all winter to become national eyesores. Taunting relics of a brighter day; tattered edges fluttering with each stiff breeze.

  I rubbed my ear looking for ease.

  The parameters of her final resting place were delineated by a low wall, built so long ago that whatever time and effort the original builder had invested in the careful placement of each fieldstone was now moot. The barricade had fallen sometime long ago, and now pine needles accumulated against the low imprint of the once-firm wall.

  A sigh was building inside my chest.

  I could go inside. Then I wouldn’t have to watch her fluttering back and forth like a demented moth.

  I had mixed feelings about the Fae ghost. Two days ago, she’d stolen some of my magic. Fortified by it, she’d transformed herself from a mute, ghostly apparition to a far more substantial specter. With form came voice, which she’d used to call the Fae portal.

  Yes. A damn ghost knew the song and I didn’t.

  However, Casperella’s summons had set Trowbridge’s and Lexi’s homecoming into motion, as well as serving as a hell of a distraction when it looked like it was curtains for me.

  Technically, I wasn’t sure if I owed her or not. She did thieve from me, but stealing isn’t really a big, black negative on my moral checklist. Perhaps that was the reason I couldn’t escape the feeling that I should tell her the Merenwyn-bound train was pulling into the station. The gates were going to be called in an hour or two. It could be her last chance to go home.

  Karmawise, it seemed like a good idea.

  I know I said that I’d never be Karma’s bitch again, but that doesn’t mean I’m not aware she’s there, waiting like the sister-in-law who really hates you and is just dying to see you do something that deserves a huge, public smack-down.

  And—much harder to deny—I was my mother’s daughter.

  Part of me is Fae.

  Unless someone warned Casperella that she needed to be inside the ward boundaries being drawn at that very minute around the fairy pond, she was going to be forever locked out of her homeland. Which could have been my homeland, if Mom had married a Fae nobleman instead of a Were brewery worker.

  Maybe I could encourage her to move past her walls.

  Head to the light, Casperella. All will be welcome.

  I held the lungful of air for one more resistant second, then let out a long, heavy, why-me exhale. Making a detour to the porch, I picked up my flashlight, and headed across the lawn for the path that led through the swath of mixed woods that delineated the Alpha’s private residence from the pack’s gathering field.

  The second I stepped on it, the kid’s bite mark flared. Pain, sharp as if the little guy’s molars were crushing my skin again.

  “Fae Stars!” I sucked in some breath sharply and bent over at the waist, protectively cradling my arm in the universal “damn that hurts” pain comma.

  Crap. I could smell sweet peas.

  Grimacing, I pulled aside the wrappings. The bite had reopened again. A bead of floral-sweet blood now decorated the deepest imprint left from the kid’s eyetooth. But even worse? The surrounding skin beyond those two oval half rings had a slight—though definite—green fluorescent glow to it.

  My arm’s green. That can’t be good.

  Kind of unsettling. No one wants to look down at their arm and see illumination. But there it was. I’ve been marked. He’d left something on me, that kid—besides a troubled conscience and a bucketload of guilt. When his teeth had pierced my skin in Threall, either some of his magic or some of Threall’s magic had seen an opportunity to find a new home.

  But what was with th
at sudden, needle-sharp pain?

  I walked to about the spot where the bite had suddenly redeveloped teeth, and then, arm out, I did a blind-man shuffle. Nothing. No crushing pressure. Not even a twinge. I took another step in the general direction of the path, and then another, and then … bingo, the bite throbbed. Acute and rather miserable pain.

  I retreated and the nasty throb ratcheted down to a thrum.

  Merry extended the tip of her vine to snag my jacket’s collar, then did a rather inelegant scramble to my shoulder for a better viewing point. Her body twisted this way and that, as if she was expecting a mage to come strolling out of the woods.

  “I think we just walked across a line of magic, Merry.”

  My amulet had a think about that, then patted me, kind of the way a mum might when she saw the line of D plusses on her kid’s report card. But the heart of her stone was tinged with orange—her color for caution.

  “Yes,” said my Fae impatiently. “Magic.”

  Huh. So, leylines are a mesh beneath the crust of the earth?

  Okay then.

  And now, my arm pinged—or rather, imaginary teeth ruthlessly crushed my flesh—whenever I passed one of those leylines? That was both fascinating—hey Mum, look what I can do!—and frustrating because there was no other path through to the cemetery, unless I wanted to retrace the cliffside walk that Trowbridge had done with Natasha. And to do that? Well, I’d need to use my flashlight, which would definitely highlight the fact that I wasn’t waiting patiently on the porch.

  A roll of thunder. Sounding close, and yet the sky was still clear. There was no blanket of clouds drifting across the waning stars.

  The path beckoned. How quickly could I nip down it? A minute if I walked fast?

  I started off at a brisk trot, which quickly splintered into an anguished sprint. Twelve seconds later, I burst into the pack’s gathering field like I was going for the blue ribbon, arm raised, bite mark flickering like a glow worm.

  The meadow smelled of the pack, and of fear, and of recent death. The hair stood up on the nape of my neck as I walked past the tree to which I’d been chained before Knox had plunged the knife into my chest.