Chapter Forty-one
HARMONY had never moved as fast through the water as she did to get away from King. On the beach, she snatched her robe and put it on while she ran to the castle.
King called to her from a distance, but she didn’t look back. Let him crawl out of the water. He deserved to crawl.
“Fool.” When they were mak—yes, making love, or getting as close as
she’d
ever gotten—the idiot had lowered his wall long enough to taste passion, which terrified the starch out of him. So he backed off, the jerk. Not that she could read him like she used to, but she
knew
him better now, and he was running scared . . . on the inside.
Fine, go. Run till you’re alone and lonely. It won’t matter. You’ll always want me
. And that wasn’t magick speaking; it was fact. He didn’t know it yet, but she, unfortunately, did.
After she dressed, she went to the kitchen, where everyone was eating a quiet supper—too quiet—except for Jake, who rattled on about the educational video he’d watched before his nap. His rendition of the playmate song not only broke the ice, it melted everyone at the table, especially King, who beamed with pride.
“Tell us about the bonfire,” Reggie said.
“Our ancestors built bonfires on midsummer’s eve to honor the light of fire, and we’ll build ours like theirs. Bonfires are rare these days because most people don’t have a private beach, so we’re lucky and grateful to King for lending us his. To help celebrate, after supper, anybody who wants can come with us to gather wood to burn. It’s part of the fun, but we take only dry branches off the ground. We never hurt a tree.”
After a heavily frosted brownie, Jake dragged Reggie to the door. “This is so much fun,” he said, though he hadn’t started yet, but he stopped to look beyond his mother. “Grampa? Hurry up. We gotta go get branches.”
“Grumpy Grampa,” Harmony said as he passed.
Within the hour, Harmony placed her branches on the growing pile and stood where she and King had escaped the parlor car, now back in the shed for Aiden to rebuild. Hard to believe, looking at King now, all hard and detached, that they’d been so close, in mind and heart, in this very spot.
She welcomed the joking revelers as they added branches to the pile. “My sisters and I have never had the opportunity to share this holiday with anyone,” she said, “and the camaraderie is wonderful. Thank you, Morgan. Aiden. Jake, that’s such an impressive bundle of wood, I’m gonna ask you to hold some protective blue balloons during the ritual tomorrow. You carried as much wood as a man just now.”
“I can carry balloons . . . but I’m only a boy, not a man.”
“Nearly three going on sixty, right?”
“No.” He giggled. “I’m not sixty. Grampa is sixty.”
King pulled the boy against his good leg. “I’m thirty-seven, you little terror. Can you say, ‘My grampa is young, and
handsome
, and thirty-seven’?”
“No.” Jake giggled and hid his face against King’s leg, until he peeked at Harmony.
She turned his little chin. “Repeat after me. My grampa is young, and
dense,
and thirty-seven.”
Jake nodded. “My grampa is young, and
dense,
and thirty-seven.”
King tickled him. “Her version, you remember?”
Reggie lifted her son so he could hug King, and she ruffled both their heads. “Dense the both of you,” she said. “Hey, Harmony, I understand dancing around a bonfire, but what’s with the dawn ritual?”
Harmony sat in the sand, and everyone but King did the same. “A midsummer ritual is perfect for protective magick,” Harmony said. “We’re hoping to cleanse, purify, bless, and protect the castle, replace its negative energy with positive, and send Gussie on her peaceful way. This is a sun holiday, so I’m asking the light of the sun to master Gussie’s darkness.”
Reggie didn’t look convinced. “Suppose Gussie goes nuts first? Couldn’t she send your altar flying before you start, like the mural scaffolding?”
“We’ve been cleansing the negativity in the castle, room by room, in preparation, so there should be enough positive energy for us to get started. And the ritual circle is a sacred place, so Gussie won’t be able to break in. We’ll wear protective garlands of herbs and flowers. A powerful herb against negativity is chase devil, known to you as Saint-John’s-wort.”
Harmony didn’t want to scare King with the belief that young women would find their significant others at midsummer festivals.
“Hey, Sis, I know this is serious stuff, but you forgot the best part.”
“Storm, I don’t think—”
“Get this, Reggie,” Storm said. “The moon at midsummer is called the honey moon. Unmarried women wearing herb garlands during the festivities expect to find lovers or husbands.”
“Cool,” Reggie said, but King stood more rigid, his free hand clenched, his eyes broody.
As if the sun matched his mood, dusk descended with Harmony’s hopes, and they all went inside.
King’s body language said he thought she was trying to trap him, though she knew he was more afraid of his own feelings.
Didn’t matter. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody.
“You know what?” King said, when they got inside and he saw the Oak King table. “This is nuts. I’m taking Reggie and Jake to Boston for the next couple of days.”
“Why?” Harmony and her sisters asked.
“To protect them—”
“And yourself,” Harmony said.
“Right.” He ushered Reggie and Jake toward the great hall door and turned back to her. “Stay, have your ceremony, then go.”
Harmony recovered from her shock and followed them.
“Let’s go, Reggie. Get in the helicopter.”
“But, Dad, we need to pack our things. And I wanna stay.”
“We’re going. We’ll get everything we need in Boston.”
Reggie sighed, and King got her and Jake settled before he went around the helicopter to get in, but he looked back at Harmony, and their eyes met and held.
She raised her chin so he wouldn’t see how much she hurt. “You protect them from me,” she said, “and I’ll protect them from Gussie.”
He gave her a half nod and got in the chopper. By the time it lifted off, she turned to find Aiden, Morgan, and her sisters behind her.
Destiny took her arm. “Maybe we shouldn’t go through with the ritual. I mean, he doesn’t care. We could go home and let him keep Gussie.”
Harmony stopped. “Listen to that demented cry. If it were just King, I’d go,” she said, “I’m mad enough. But Reggie and Jake love this place. It’s their first real home. We need to try and reclaim it for them.”
“That’s sporting of you,” Aiden said. “King doesn’t deserve you.”
“No, he doesn’t.” But she’d belong to him forever, whether he wanted her to or not.
Storm took her other arm. “Sending Gussie to a place of peace, and away from here, is your psychic mandate, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I believe that bringing peace to Paxton Castle is the reason I was directed here.”
“You realize that you may never see King again,” Storm said.
Harmony laid her head on the rebel’s shoulder. “I don’t believe I will.”
They sat on the beach, Destiny holding one of her hands and Storm holding the other. “You can’t read him like you used to, can you?” Storm asked.
“How did you know? Weird, isn’t it?”
Storm shook her head with regret. “Not if you’ve fallen in love with him.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Well, I am, but I also see the present. You’re in love with the tight-assed technocrat. Not only that, you’re pretty fond of his off-with-your-head castle, and you adore his daughter and grandson.”
“A grandfather? I’m in love with a doddering old grandfather.”
Morgan chuckled and bent down in front of her with a glass of something the color of King’s eyes.
She sniffed it. “I hope this is
very
strong tea.”
“Whiskey. Go ahead. Do you good.”
She sipped it, and while she did, she thought about the way she drank King in when his whiskey eyes gazed into hers.
Chapter Forty-two
AS his helicopter rose off the island, King tried to ignore the disappointed look on Reggie’s face. He especially tried to ignore Jake’s tears, though that was difficult, because that boy could wail louder than Gussie. “I wanna be a dragon,” he cried. “I gotta beat the drum.”
“I’ll buy you a dragon suit and a drum in Boston.”
“No. I want
my
dragon suit. Dessie made it for me.”
Jake’s little bottom lip made for a really good pout, King thought, wishing the boy’s sadness didn’t tear him up inside. “How about a drum?”
“No.”
“Dad, there are some things you can’t buy. Happiness and the joy of family celebrations are two of them.”
“Those witches are not your family.”
“We got nisheeated!” Jake shouted.
“What’d he say?”
“They initiated us into their family when we stayed with them in Salem. Harmony, Destiny, and Storm—even Vickie and Rory, though you haven’t met them, yet—are all part of our family.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “And I wanna hold the blue balloons.”
“Is this the downside of parenthood?” King asked Reggie.
“What? A crying child? Or making stupid decisions based on your own fears?”
“Ouch! Nice talk.” King did a double take his daughter’s way.
“Don’t think I can’t stand up for myself,” she said. “I wouldn’t have survived on the streets or found you if I couldn’t.”
“You’ve learned a lot from Harmony, too.” He eyed his daughter’s irreverent T-shirt. “Who Are You and Why?” he asked, reading it.
Reggie folded her arms and raised her chin. “I could ask you the same question.”
What could he say to that? “I like Harmony,” an understatement he wouldn’t explore, “but her magick doesn’t—”
“Fit in with your belief system?” Reggie asked. “What do you believe in, Dad? I mean do you believe in a higher power?”
“Like the electric company?” He shrugged. “I guess I never thought about it. At military school I went to services because I had to.”
“Which denomination?”
“Whichever one had the shortest service. It changed, depending on the preacher/priest/rabbi/monk of the semester.”
“Do you know how I got through my year on the road?”
“No,” King said turning to her, “but I’d like to.”
“You’re gonna think this is lame, but my favorite TV show when I left home was
Joan of Arcadia
. And, well, I pretended I was her, doing what God wanted me to do—take care of my son and find you—no matter how hard it got sometimes.”
“You did an excellent job. Your son’s bright and well-mannered.”
“That’s him, not me. I put him in a day care preschool in Jersey for a couple of months, and they said he tested like a four and a half to a five-year-old. I think somewhere along the line, he picked up on my struggle, and he tried to make it easier for me, or God tried, and Jake helped.” Reggie shrugged.
“The point is,” she said turning back to him a minute later, “if I hadn’t believed in something greater than myself, I couldn’t have done it. So don’t get all bent out of shape at Harmony’s belief system. At least she has one. She’s a good person, Dad. They all are. They took me in so
you
could go to jail in California.”
“Low blow.”
“I’m feeling low.”
Jake had fallen asleep by then, a temporary quiet King appreciated. Reggie turned away to look out her window, though it was too dark to see anything but lights.
Who was he? she’d asked. A man who’d been making mad, passionate love to—no, having sex with—a woman he’d just met. A woman who claimed to be a psychic witch. But since she’d practically read his mind from the first, he figured he might have to give her the psychic part.
What
did
he believe in?
He believed . . . he wanted his birthright, that blasted haunted castle, as much as his daughter did, though he’d been afraid to admit it until Harmony made him hope she could save it from Gussie—or whatever caused the wail, and accidents, and arguing—okay, so maybe it was Gussie. Hell, Jake had
seen
her.
How could he fault Reggie and Jake for falling for Harmony right off, when he’d done the same?
Well, he hadn’t fallen for her, precisely. He’d been attracted, and a little in lust, maybe. A lot in lust. He wanted to see her when he opened his eyes mornings, hold her as he fell asleep at night. He wanted to tell her everything that happened at the end of the day.
Like now, he wanted to tell her about Jake crying to be a dragon, and about his grandson’s word for
initiated
.
What would life be like if he never saw Harmony again?
King couldn’t imagine a lonelier existence . . . so he must be fond of her. He’d never really be lonely with Jake and Reggie around, though Reggie might get married someday, and Jake would go to school, and away to college. Hmm. Maybe he would be lonely.
He loved Harmony for taking Reggie and Jake under her wing. And he adored her for saving their lives. He
almost
had the sense that she’d saved his life, but that was more nonsense.
King didn’t remember landing the chopper, but since Ed was opening the door to his limo, he figured he must have. “My apartment, Ed,” he told his driver, who got them efficiently out of Beverly and on the highway to Boston.
“After you drop off my Dad,” Reggie said leaning forward. “Will you take me and my son back to Salem, please?”
“Get off at the nearest exit, Ed,” King said, “and find a place to pull over.”
“I’m gonna be a dragon, that’s me,” Jake sang. “I’m gonna beat on a drum, that’s neat. I’m gonna hold a balloon, that’s blue.”
“You think your kid’s gonna take up mind reading or song writing when he grows up?” King asked his daughter.
“He can be anything he wants.” Reggie leaned close to whisper in his ear. “Jake can even be a dense, tight-assed technocrat.”
King reared back.
“What’s a tekkacrat?”
“You see what you did?” King said, indicating his grandson in the car seat facing them.
Reggie laughed. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and he’s got your genes written all over him.”
“So do you.” But that didn’t make King happy at the moment, because the only gene that came to mind was the stubborn one. “Damn it, Regg!”
“Damn it, Regg!”
“Jake, cut that out. Ed, you wanna take us back to the Beverly Airport and call ahead so my chopper’s ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
Reggie threw her arms around him. “I love you, Daddy.”
“Me, too, kitten,” he said, appalled that he couldn’t even use the word
love
with his family. What was
wrong
with him?
Before long, they were back at the Beverly Airport. “We won’t need you anymore tonight, Ed. Thanks.” King got out of the limo. “Will every dense Paxton in this car please follow me?” If he had one shot at giving these two the home they deserved, then Harmony and her midsummer madness seemed to be his only hope.
Okay, so it might be
his
one shot, too. Who knew?
When the island came into sight, King shivered, deep down, as if he were foolishly happy to be back.
“Now, when we land, Dad,” Reggie cautioned. “You’re gonna keep an open mind, right? Promise you will. And loosen up, will you? Stop being such a tight—”
“Regg!”
“I’m gonna be a dragon, that’s me.”
“Stop being dense and unyielding,” Reggie said, correcting herself. She saw the beach and whooped. “Jake, there’s no fire, yet. We got back in time. You can be a dragon with a drum!”
“Yay, Grampa!”
King chuckled. “Yay, Jake!” He landed and took Jake from his seat.
“Here comes Honey,” Jake whispered in his ear, as if he understood there was friction between them. “Be nice,” his grandson added.
“Keep it low on the grouch meter, Dad,” Reggie said. “Harmony’s headed this way.”
“Thanks, but your son already gave me my orders,” King snapped, and Reggie chuckled.
Harmony looked like a wounded animal, afraid to trust. He’d never seen her shut down like this. He knew, because he . . . he’d done it to her, the way he’d done it to himself. Damn, he didn’t like grasping that fine point. He wanted to blame her for helping him grasp it, which pretty much meant that
he
still had the mentality of a two-year-old. Why not cry and sing his woes? Maybe Jake would teach him how. And maybe Reggie would teach him to grow up.
Harmony ran to meet them, and King’s heart lifted, but she passed him to welcome Reggie and Jake.
The three of them walked around him and passed him by without a word, Harmony carrying Jake, who was chattering away, happy as a clam.
King leaned more heavily on his cane and shoved his other hand in his pocket to follow them home—to the castle. He stopped to look up at the monster. When had he stopped thinking of it as an albatross and started thinking of it as home?
By the time he got inside, Jake was already dressed like a dragon. Cute little barefooted green thing.
“If he isn’t the most adorable midsummer dragon I’ve ever seen,” Harmony said, “I’ll eat—”
“Your words,” Destiny said. “You’ve never seen a midsummer dragon, like we’ve never been able to celebrate with a bonfire.”
Harmony shrugged. “I forgot.” Her feet bare, her toe ring glistening, and her black robe flowing around her, she handed everybody a candle, except for Jake. To his grandson, she gave the drum, which Jake started drumming immediately, off beat and nonstop.
“Something tells me you’re gonna be sorry,” Reggie yelled over the din.
“Nah.” Harmony grinned. “This is a fun celebration. That’s the point. Have fun. Everybody get in line, and Destiny will put a wreath on your head. Flowers for the ladies and greenery for the gentlemen. I’ll light your candles, then we’ll parade out to our soon-to-be-glorious midsummer bonfire.”
“Why isn’t anyone wearing shoes?” King asked.
“Because we’re not uptight like you,” Storm answered.
Destiny chuckled. “We’re communing with the elements of nature tonight—earth, air, fire, and water. Communing works better without clothes. I should think
you’d
know that.”
King swore inwardly and pulled off his shoes.
When all the candles were lit, Harmony hooked a duffel bag over her shoulder, lit her candle on Destiny’s, and took Jake by the hand. “I’ll chant, and Jake will drum, and everybody, follow us.”
She led them in a serpentine parade through the kitchen and out the door, but before they cleared the castle’s shadow, King’s bare feet were killing him, plus he felt like an ass, because Morgan and Aiden were enjoying themselves.
So why couldn’t he loosen up and enjoy himself?
Because, if the ritual worked, Harmony would leave? Hell no.
He
wanted
her to go.
Of course he did.