Crimson Cove (2 page)

There was a storm in the Cove.

We were ten years old and huddled together in the largest clearing where his territory and mine met. I was scared, frightened of the wind and the rain and the weather—terrified of the boy so much bigger, stronger than me. My fear was tangible, controlling, but I wondered, with how his fingers shook as I held his arm, how his voice quaked when he said my father would return soon and save me, if he is
only
cold,
only
worried about the weather and not being stuck in the storm with me.

Bane’s magic was strong, stronger than mine, but the fire he started with a gray and tan flint rock was weak, his chant to invoke a spark, sloppy. There was a shudder that worked through his arms as he cursed, when the grip of my cape slipped and water extinguished his small fire.

“Hold it still, Jani.” But that tremor remained and the low, soft rumble of his voice that softened my heart, made me realize that maybe it wasn’t only
just
me, that made this tall, strong boy seem just as small as I was.

Above us, thunder and lightning met, blasted apart the clouds and darkness until the largest maple in the center of the clearing splintered in half with one bolt. This time, I didn’t stop the stupid squeal of shock, of absolute conviction that I was about to die, from leaving my mouth.

“Shhh, it’s fine, Jani.” His shirt was wet, stuck to his thin arm as he pulled it over my shoulder. “Don’t be such a girl.”

“I’m not.” But even as I said that, wiping my wet nose against my sleeve, the croak in my voice gave me away. Bane smiled, something he never did, not since his folks died two years before in that car crash and he came to live with the Grants in the largest manor in Crimson Cove.

“Besides,” a small glare I didn’t mean and Bane stopped smiling altogether, “what’s wrong with being a girl?”

“Nothing, I suppose.” Bane tugged at my cape and we huddled close, covering the small pile of sticks and leaves, trying to ignite the fire again. He moved his fingers together, closing his eyes as the old invocation, though still sloppy, became a chorus of sound leaving his mouth—music that hummed with the slow, smooth current of the ley lines around us. “Well,” he said, once the fire caught, “I guess girls like you are okay.”

“Girls like me?”

He nodded, slow, barely moving his head at all, as though agreeing was a theory he needed to test. “Girls who don’t back down from a dare.”

“It was a stupid dare.”

He looked up again as the rain rattled harder, as thunder once again cracked against the darkness above us. “Yeah. I guess it was.”

Another slap of lighting and Bane moved closer to me, helping me keep the cape over the fire to block the wind and I clung to him, trying to pretend I was only cold and not so scared of him anymore. When he clutched me back, the heat from his scrawny body warmed the coldness in mine, and the smallest flicker of light connected his skin, his hand, his fingers to mine. There was a rush of something I had never felt before, something that pulled Bane’s forehead against my own, until I could almost hear inside his head, a whoosh of sound and chemistry that I didn’t understand. It tasted of ozone and rainwater; the small zip of energy running, meeting from our skin to the tips of our fingers, scorching without burning, warming until the fear and the worry disappeared.

And then came the sound of running feet, and my papa and Bane’s uncle calling out to us, but still that sweet zip, glowing red, permeated between us, through us.

And then, we forgot. 

The memory came again, of when I was twelve. I ran from Micah Allen and his stupid cousins, through the pecan grove north of the Grant’s territory. I wanted to hide, to scream, to forget that I was a girl, to forget that my body and magic stirred and broke inside me, that I could no longer twist hexes just because they were funny. I couldn’t give Micah lice with a snap of my fingers because he called me a loathsome mongrel bitch, even though those old coven insults were the worst, because they cut the deepest.

Those stupid Allen boys—all gingers with too many freckles and lopsided ears—crowded me among all the black bark trees with pecans falling from the limbs like fat, leaking grapes rotted on the vine. Then, there was only the tree at my back and my feet slipping as I scrabbled over fallen pecans.

“Maybe I should make those big eyes of yours look damn foolish with eyebrows that cover your forehead,” Micah said, wiggling his fingers near my forehead. “Or maybe you’d like a broken arm to match your twin’s.”

I didn’t want a broken arm like Mai’s. It was her and my folks and even my stupid brother Samedi that came to my mind just then—not how Micah and his cousins were stepping closer. She should have never tried skating backward off the dock...and suddenly, for some reason that made no sense to me at all, I thought of Bane Iles and his glowering frown and the stupid way he bullied anyone who spoke poorly to me. It was Bane who was in my thoughts as one fat Allen cousin grabbed my arm and pulled my hands at my sides so I could not spell Micah.

And just as suddenly, and with the same lack of reason or sense, in the fussing and confusion and me kicking and cursing, there Bane stood, in the grove, towering over Micah and all his dumpy cousins.

              “Leave.”

It was all he said. All he needed to say, and just like that, as Micah and his cousins ran away and Bane stared down at me like I was a bother, it was then that I knew I had a protector.

I never knew why.

I never cared why, but at ten and twelve and other formidable ages, I’d acquired a bodyguard—one that seemed to know when I was afraid or worried, or whenever I wouldn’t admit that I needed help.

One that I could never quite remember speaking to for more than a minute.

One that my papa said it was best not to be too friendly with.

A boy that watched when he wasn’t asked. 

Chapter One

Magic is elemental. It’s a full-bodied thread in all that we are. To me, to all my folk—witches and wizards of every make and the other supernatural creatures that co-exist in our ley line-loving world—magic simply
is
. 

              It was magic that lived deep inside me, hidden beneath the wretch of who I’d been, of what I’d done ten years ago at age eighteen. My father would call me a hypocrite, if we were still talking. He’d tell me that keeping myself from the covens in New York, and from my family back in Crimson Cove, keeping myself from the life he taught me to be proud of, was a coward’s way.

              I was a witch only when it served my purposes.

              Like now, slipping inside the dreams of such a talented writer. My client, Ivanna Ride (pseudonym, of course), was the hottest thing in erotic fiction. She outsold and out published even the most popular authors and she did it on her own. There was no major house working behind her. Just Ivanna, her clever English nerd husband, and me, Janiver Benoit, graphic artist extraordinaire. Well, that might be pushing it. It was magic that made me extraordinary and it was my gifts that helped me slip inside Ivanna’s mind and discover the theme, the vibe, the truly disturbing imagery she saw when she dreamt of her characters.

              This time around it was Kjel, the 1050 A.D. Viking warrior in love with an enemy clan leader’s daughter. Blood and war and lots of sex. That’s what I had to make come to life on the cover of her book.

              Walking inside Ivanna’s mind was like taking a stroll through a Renaissance Fair—on acid. The mist around me as I stepped into her dream was thick, a clotting smell that stuck in the back of my throat and choked me with the heavy scent of lavender. It hung in my sinuses, made my dry mouth collect with saliva. But on the back of that scent was something I recognized only vaguely as sweat. In Ivanna’s dreams, there was sex. It became apparent that’s what she had in mind, literally, when her REM cycle kicked into high gear.

              Kjel—or who I took for Kjel—stood barefoot atop a bear skin rug in a rugged stone hut, glaring down at some whimpering, silly girl who looked more turned on than frightened. She was the enemy’s daughter knocking on the door of womanhood, looking at Kjel like she wanted him to guide her way through it.

              With a shudder of sound and the shift of light, the scene changed and the small room with its dirt floor became a boudoir with fine, cerise linens and a massive four poster bed. The girl’s face transformed to mimic something like Ivanna’s. At least, how she’d looked this afternoon when I listened to her babble on and on about the pending Kjel series and her vision for the rest of her books, her promo graphics and the blog tours she was organizing.

              I’d listened to her politely, nodding where appropriate as this mid-forties woman tucked strands of curly brown hair behind her ear. Damn. Was it petty of me to notice that there was gray flirting in those strands near her temples? She guzzled on an iced coffee as she talked, never once asking for my opinion or curious about what ideas might have come to me when I’d read the manuscript. That didn’t bother me, though, not really. My clients typically didn’t want to know what I thought. They just wanted to make sure I made magic happen on their covers and their promo materials.

              Funny how close that was to the truth.

              I’d listened to Ivanna for nearly an hour, sipping my own Venti English Breakfast Tea, more interested in the chipping black paint on my fingernails and the wadded napkin Ivanna had used to wipe her mouth. That would be the souvenir I’d take to give me access to her dreams.

              Magic, no matter what fantasy authors or Renaissance vendors tell you, is just an old school name for the things mortals want proof of to believe. Everything we do has to be logical, must have some kind of explanation.

              It is true that there has to be basis for every spell or hex. There has to be something elemental that connects our target or, in my case, client, to the magic we twist. It isn’t simply supernatural. It’s dependent on the natural. Magic elevates it.  That’s why I needed Ivanna’s napkin. It was something she’d held, something that she’d left a bit of herself behind on and it was the element I needed to slip into her dreams.

              But I didn’t like doing it—dreamwalking, not like this. It was an invasion that made me feel cheap and simple. Intruding into someone else’s private dreams? Seeing the things they’d never freely admit to desiring? I was like some kind of perv trying to make my clients happy by copying their own imaginations. Bet dear ole dead mummy would be
damn proud
of me.

              Still, it paid the bills.  So I stalked in the shadows in my client’s dreamworld.  Kjel and dream Ivanna were starting to go at it. Bleaching my eyeballs was the first order of business when I woke up, which needed to happen right now. I had work to do.

              I started that slow awakening, the controlled transition that would bring me out of Ivanna’s mind and back to the “real” world. It was a simple enough process—a little focus on my breathing, on the things around me. I drew upon a picture in my mind’s eye of my tiny apartment, of myself lying in only a black tank and red boy shorts, my dark hair covering my face, tattoos and runes dotting around my ankles, thighs, up the side of one bicep. The black ink was shaped in ancient languages, looping around my arm, connected to a black and gray rose on my left shoulder.

              Things were calm, my mind working effortlessly to bring me back safely, away from Ivanna’s Viking wet dream and her saccharine world. I was nearly there, watching myself sleep, turn beneath my white sheets, knocking over an empty tumbler on my bedside table—not the bourbon, thank God—and then, the emergency alarm on my phone blasted sharp and piercing into the room.

             
Jani! Jani!
The alarming scream of my brother’s voice shot through the slow retreat my mind made. Sam’s voice became a grating, loud yelp that made my chest constrict as my heart speed.

             
Jani! Jani, for fuck’s sake, wake up!

              And I did, jerking from my sheets, sending my pillows shooting onto the floor and the thick gasp of air in my lungs coming out like a yelp.

              “Shit!”

              The bell from my laptop lying on the floor next to my bed kept ringing, that low, constant loop that announced a Skype call. Sam, though he hadn’t actually spoken to me, still had a way of scaring the hell out me, nineteen hundred miles away. My brother could call to me, unannounced, whenever he wanted, but especially when I was unconscious. The little shit.

              “Stupid, intrusive…” My laptop flopped against the mattress when I picked it up and jammed my finger on the surface to accept the call. I didn’t bother letting my big brother explain a damn thing. “You asshole, I was in someone’s dream.”

              “Well hey to you too, little sister.”

              A quick glance at my cell phone to cut off the insistent text I knew Sam had sent me and I caught the time. Shit, someone was probably dead.

              “Who died?” My brother’s small chuckle was the only thing that made me relax enough to leave the bed and tug on my jeans.

“No one yet, though I’m pretty close to killing your brother-in-law.” My brother always blamed me when shit hit the fan and from his tone, I’d guessed that this time the shit had slammed into the preverbal fan in buckets.

Still, that wasn’t my fault. “Ronan is your brother-in-law too,
Samedi
.”

“Yeah.” The frustration was heavy in his voice at my using his full name. “Well Mai is your twin,
Janiver,
and since it’s her husband that started all this shit, it should be you that gets us out of it.”

Mai was younger than me by only four minutes, but somehow we were years apart. I always picked up the pieces when she let her world fall apart—like it was now, with her in the middle of a bad breakup with her lazy, perpetually cheating husband. Still, it wasn’t my fight. “You’ve got the wrong twin.”

I cut Sam off from whatever excuse I knew he was going to use when he cleared his throat by shaking my head, and reaching out to grab the bottle of bourbon that had been sitting on the table beside my bed. I took a deep pull on the bottle, despite the glare my brother gave me. “Ask Mai to work out this mess.”

“She can’t. She’s gone off the rails.”

That meant trouble. It was habit, something my twin did when she couldn’t handle the messes she’d made for herself.

“What…” a small exhale and I readied for the bad news I suspected was coming. “What do you mean?”

“She’s back at Papa’s and won’t come out of her room.”

“
Ah,
balls.”

The bourbon didn’t burn when it went down, despite the long swig I took. My throat had grown nub to the sting of liquor a long damn time ago and the small little noise of judgment Sam made got completely ignored. When you numb yourself in order to forget, something that had become one of my more practiced habits, you tend to get used to both the bite and the judgment, no matter where they come from.

Mai’s hiding away—my twin’s way of forgetting—wasn’t the worst of the situation. Not by a long damn shot. 

“She caught him with that same stripper from last year.”

“The one with the pixie cut?”

“Yeah, whatever, but this time he didn’t bother begging Mai not to kick him out.” Sam leaned on his arm, rubbing the back of his neck. “Papa thought giving Ronan a job would maybe keep that asshole from running off for weeks at a time.” Sam looked tired, like he hadn’t bothered with sleep in days. My stomach tightened at the thought and I couldn’t quite ignore the weight in my chest that settled there. My brother had enough to deal with. He didn’t need Mai’s jackass of a husband doubling up his anxiety.

“Bet that was pointless.”

“You got no idea.” Sam rubbed his hands over his face, letting one long exhale move the messy brown bangs that fell into his eyes. “He totally fucked us over.”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

“If Papa hadn’t let Ronan take care of so many clients when they came calling, none of this would have happened. He just botched up too many jobs, was too sloppy and I was too busy to notice that his haplessness had become a serious problem.”

The whole time he had been talking to me, Sam had kept looking at his cell phone. It wasn’t like him to let a text distract him and I actually found it kind of funny that he kept focusing on the string of beeps that came from his phone.

“The whole damn town is talking about it, Jani. Papa says if we can’t pull in a big client, our name will be ruined.” Another heavy sigh and Sam threw down his cell. “Not to mention all the damn attention we’ve been getting from the mortals.”

Watching Sam, seeing the tension bunching up his features, I suddenly realized that this conversation was the longest we’d had in a year. In the past, we simply fought all the time. Even after our mother died five years ago we hadn’t managed a civil conversation. But then last summer, his wife, Rae and their unborn child died in a freak accident—killed by a falling tree during hurricane season—and our conversations had simply become short and to the point. But this was different.

“Has Ivy or his men been snooping around?” I’d held my breath after asking that question. Ivy Beckerman was Crimson Cove’s chief of police. We all suspected he wouldn’t blink twice if he caught any weres shifting into their animal forms or spirits haunting the edge of the cemetery, never mind any chance encounters of a wizard doing something beyond human comprehension. There was something about the man that made him different from the other mortals. They only saw what they wanted.  But Ivy was smart, observant; he saw things that the others didn’t. So far, though, he’d kept his questions to himself.