Banishing the Dark (The Arcadia Bell series) (36 page)
Read Banishing the Dark (The Arcadia Bell series) Online
Authors: Jenn Bennett
And as for horns of her own? The verdict’s still out on that, I suppose. Apart from her halo, there’s nothing unusual about the way she looks. But she can already kindle Heka, as Jupe knows all too well, and although we haven’t seen any definitive proof of an early knack, Lon and I have been a little on edge.
This past Christmas, Jupe rushed downstairs in a frenzy to tell me that Mr. Piggy wasn’t waking up. He was already on the far side of normal life expectancy for a pygmy hedgehog, so I knew the day would eventually come. And he might not be the coziest of pets, but it still broke my heart.
However, after I raced back upstairs with him, we found Tabby in Jupe’s room, sitting in the middle of the floor with Mr. Iggy, as she calls him. The hedgehog was sniffing around her shoes, looking perfectly normal. Tabby smiled up at us and said, “I woke him back up.”
Maybe it was nothing. But it sure freaked Jupe out. Hell, it freaked me out, too. I’d experimented with a lot of my own knacks over the last few years, but reviving the dead sure as heck wasn’t one of them. Lon said we were both crazy, but I could see the fear in his eyes. Kid with a persuasion knack? A headache. Kid with the power to reanimate dead things? A waking nightmare.
But I’m no walk in the park, either. I still didn’t completely know the outer limits of my own abilities. The rotating smorgasbord of random knacks stopped after Tabby was born, thank God. Turns out maybe it was a side effect of my pregnancy and not a sign that I was losing my humanity. And although I could still access some minor knacks when the sun was out—mostly sensory-based ones, such as empathy and clairaudience—they were nowhere near as strong in the daytime as they were after dark.
For the past year, I’d been seeing Jupe’s old psychiatrist, Dr. Spendlove, the Earthbound doctor who specialized in knacks. Naturally, I was his favorite patient, and not just as a curiosity—he said I was helping him better understand the limits of demonic abilities. I’d definitely done a lot of experimenting in his office. Most of it was harmless.okay, maybe I’d set a few things on fire and accidentally transported his desk out of his office. Where it went, I’m still not sure. Maybe I’ll find out one day.
A tiny snore erupted from Tabby’s open mouth. Lon and I stifled laughs and watched her twitch her way into dreaming. His fingers twined with mine over her back. The sliver of his halo glowed as bright as ever in my engagement ring.
Our wedding was no-frills, just us, Jupe, Kar Yee, the Holidays, and the Giovannis—minus Yvonne, who may very well be going on two years of sobriety in Miami but is not invited to family functions. Father Carrow, the retired Earthbound priest who played Cupid by introducing us, performed the ceremony right here in this yard.
A couple of months later, Lon, Jupe, and I went to his adoption hearing and made Jupe officially mine. A piece of paperwork wasn’t half as binding as my tattooed sigil on his hip, but you wouldn’t have known it from all the crying he did that day. Granted, I might have shed a few happy tears myself. Lon, too, although both of them would deny it if you asked.
Lon and I haven’t had time for a honeymoon, but
he’s promised we’re still going to France alone this winter. I might have to work my way up to it. Right now, I was struggling with the decision to send Tabby to day care. It was only a block away from the shop, so I could be there in two minutes if I ran, but it felt like a bigger step than starting a new business.
“How about you put her in bed while I bank this fire?” Lon said. “Jupe won’t be back until two—”
“You’re welcome.”
“—and she’ll sleep like the dead.”
That she would. Until exactly seven a.m., at which time she’d bang around in her room or sneak into ours and whisper, “Mommy, wake up,” until I gave in.
“We still have that bottle of wine,” he said. “And we can clean the rest of this up tomorrow.”
“Or never.”
“And Rose and Adella will be here next weekend.”
“And Adella’s new boyfriend,” I reminded him. I was a little excited to meet him. Sexy professor, she’d said. He taught at her university in a different department. And—scandal of scandals—he was two years younger.
“If people don’t stop coming to visit, I’m going to build us a separate cabin out here.”
“A sex cabin?”
“The floor will be nothing but one big mattress,” he promised. “No, I take that back. It will have everything built just the right height for every imaginable position: the counters, tables, holes in the walls—”
I laughed and had to cover my mouth not to wake the kid.
“It’ll be an Olympic training room for sex,” he said, waving his hand through the air as if he was envisioning the whole thing.
“We might need that chair, too,” I said. He knew exactly the one I was talking about.
“Hell, we might need that chair right now.”
“I’ll meet you upstairs in two minutes,” I said, pulling Tabby off his chest to settle her against one hip.
He kissed the top of her sleeping head and then leaned closer and kissed me, tickling my lips with his pirate mustache; clean-shaven Lon had only lasted for a few weeks, thank God. “Make it three,” he murmured against my lips, “and be naked by the time I get up there.”
“Dragon lady or beguiling witch?”
“Surprise me,” he said with a sexy grin.
And I did . . .
This series would not have been the same without Brian Bennett, Laura Bradford, Jennifer Heddle, Adam Wilson, Julia Fincher, Wendy Keebler, and Anne Cherry. Thanks to all the folks who work behind the scenes at Simon & Schuster, and to Tony Mauro for the great covers. Gigantic sloppy hugs to the writers who offered advice or a kind word when I needed it most, including Karen Chance, Carolyn Crane, Ann Aguirre, Karina Cooper, Lauren Dane, Donna Herren, Bree Bridges, Kevin Hearne, Kelly Meding, Sierra Dean, Sandy Williams, Marta Acosta, Delilah S. Dawson, Suzanne McLeod, and Jaye Wells. I don’t have the space to list all the bloggers and reviewers who took the time to read and review Arcadia Bell over the years, but your support has always meant the world to me (and still does). I especially want to thank
Romantic Times
, who gave me a fair shake and jumpstarted my fledging writing career when no one knew my name.
My biggest thanks, however, go out to all my
readers. You are a delightfully vocal bunch, and thanks to fan mail, Twitter, and Facebook, I know so much about you. Some of you are students, wives, parents, teachers, grandmothers, activists, and even priests. A few of you live in California, Ohio, Canada, France, Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, Brazil, and Greece. Many of you are wonderfully strange, witty, loyal, and smart, and you come from every manner of social class, race, religion, philosophical background, and political persuasion. How amazing is that? It’s never easy to say goodbye, but Cady, Lon, Jupe, and Tabby now belong to you. Please take good care of them.
© BILL SKEEL
JENN BENNETT
is an award-winning visual artist. She is also the author of
Kindling the Moon, Summoning the Night, Binding the Shadows,
and
Leashing the Tempest,
the other works in her critically acclaimed series featuring irresistible heroine Arcadia Bell. She lives near Atlanta with her husband and two pugs.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
authors.simonandschuster.com/Jenn-Bennett
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
Don’t miss the rest of the Arcadia Bell series . . .
Kindling the Moon
Summoning the Night
Binding the Shadows
And the e-novella . . .
Leashing the Tempest
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Jenn Bennett
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First Pocket Books paperback edition June 2014
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Cover photo illustration by Tony Mauro
ISBN 978-1-4516-9509-0
ISBN 978-1-4516-9512-0 (ebook)