Soul Kissed (19 page)

And you know this how?
Mason pinned Custo with a glare.

He shrugged.
The angel watching over Webb House picked it out of the delivery man’s head.

The Order is watching Webb House?
Mason didn’t know how he felt about that. If Webb discovered it, there could be trouble, in spite of his connection to Brand and Bastian. Jack Bastian was tolerated, which wasn’t the same thing as accepted, and a far cry from embraced.

Mason’s heart beat harder, sweat breaking out on his neck. Took him a sec to realize that Cari and Khan were watching him in silence. “What?”

Then understanding dawned on Cari’s face. “Angels are telepathic. They can speak right to a soul.”

Damn it
. She knew he was human, but he didn’t want to be obvious about it.

“Why is this about me, anyway?” So he made things, so what? “Weren’t we supposed to be talking about Maeve, or Mad Mab, or whatever the crazy fae queen is called?”

Khan lost his good humor, too. “What’s to talk about? Dolan is the mage offspring of the mad queen. The Dolan line has
always
known to kill any females born to them, to stop Mab from entering the world again. Cari’s father was either ignorant, or was too weak to do it.”

Cari shook her head. “Not weak. He loved me.”

“And Caspar was not ignorant either,” Mason told him. “His library alone contains more knowledge than all the other Houses combined.”

“Bah,” Khan said. “He knew better. By the time you were born, he had to know that Maeve was mad.”

“He controlled her. And I can control her, too,” Cari said. “I’m getting better and better at it.”

Mason kept his mouth shut. She already knew what he thought about her ability to manage that limitless Shadow. No one could control it.

Khan tilted his head as if he were talking to a child. “How long has Maeve been with you?”

Cari exhaled audibly. “About two weeks.”

“Bear Mad Mab for a year, and you will welcome her into your mind, into your body.”

“Cari’s father lived with Maeve for decades.”

“He was a man. Dolan is a
female
line. Maeve would have been but a whisper to him.” Khan looked at Cari. “Is she a whisper to you?”

Her eyes got that full look, as if her mind was filling with awful conclusions. She shook her head. No.

Mason bore down on Khan’s point. “If Maeve is so evil . . .”

Khan shook his head. “Not evil. If she were evil, then good in equal force could be marshaled against her. The fae don’t recognize good or evil; they live on whim. They are elemental, essential, like death and dreams. You can’t fight an elemental. You can only keep it in its place. The sun must stay in the sky. The seas must not ravage the land. Dreams must stay within Twilight, lest they become nightmares on Earth.”

“That would be Order,” Custo said under his breath.

Khan glowered at the Shadow-darkened angel. “Wolf, you asked me to kill you once. I’ll oblige you now.”

Cari’s gaze went distant, internal. “The angel that threw the spear at me. He knows about Maeve?”

Custo answered. “Yes. He’s on a personal quest, though. Not Order sanctioned. He is being tracked by a team, led by the best.” He looked over at Mason. “You met him, I think. Laurence?”

Mason bobbed a nod to say, yes, they’d met. The mention made him restless and uncomfortable. Laurence had looked inside him. He’d seen all the horrible things that Mason had never wanted brought to light again.

Khan gazed off into the trees, his alien eyes squinting. Wild animals. “Tell Adam that the children should not play on the grounds today.” He looked at Cari. “Maybe for a few days.”

“Will do,” Custo said.

Cari put a hand to Mason’s knee. “I should go.”

She meant she didn’t want to be the reason anyone here got hurt. If her thoughts kept going down that road, she was going to make a terrible decision about herself.

She’s a keeper,
Custo said.

Didn’t work that way among magekind, so Mason didn’t answer him. He took Cari’s hand, and she stood when he did. “We’ll head out right away.”

Her lips pressed together, as if she were going to suggest something. Mason knew what was on her mind—her “
I
should go” had given her away.

Mason shook his head before she could put her thought into words. For reasons he wouldn’t bother to enumerate to the very smart Cari Dolan, he said simply, “Together.”

Xavier strode into the crowd that moved in constantly morphing packs through Harvard Square. He attached himself to the back of a family. Camouflage. The Order was pursuing him. He wiped the mind of a father mid-conversation with his adult children, and supplanted his face in their memories. The true father wandered dumbly on with the wave of people. A baseball cap and an animated discussion about the children’s university coursework were his disguise as angels filtered through the throng in search.

“—so then Dr. Schmidt, the program chair, said I could look at witchcraft in
The Scarlet Letter
in terms of the modern mage movement. I mean, the concept of ‘the woods’ alone will be an entire section of the paper.”

Xavier had to resist the impulse to look around and gauge how close the angels were. He felt their eyes on the back of his neck. He hid under the voice and mind chatter all around him. Music up ahead sent punctuated ripples of sound all around. As he hadn’t been in ages, he was self-conscious of his rank smell. Would one of these young angels think to use his nose?

“Dad, are you listening?” The young woman grabbed his arm, and Xavier was forced to look down at her. “So I submitted a proposal to the department’s top scholar’s program, and in light of current events, they awarded the grant to
me
.”

Adversity had never deterred him before. But now that he’d been identified, and at least part of his mission revealed, success was not assured. His heart ached with disappointment he could not afford. All this time. All this waiting. The excruciating silence of the days. The loneliness.

No. He could not afford self-pity.

Victory must be assured. In the darkest moments, he must still hold fast. It didn’t matter what it cost him. He’d pledged his soul to combating Shadow, and he still had that soul to give.

“Dad!” The young woman sounded hurt.

Her mother looked around, forehead wrinkling. “What’s the matter?”

Xavier’s skin flashed cold with the threat of exposure.

He waved the mother away with a smile and feigned interest in the girl’s topic. She was interested in mages?

Soul light burned his back behind him, but he forced his head to bend down to the girl’s ear. “Witchcraft.”

She nodded, an adult begging for attention like a dog.

He should take precautions. People needed to know.

Xavier moved into her mind as he whispered. “If you’re going to be passionate about witchcraft, what about the one in your midst? Cari Dolan.”

Her eyes were blank for a moment, then sparked. “Might be an interesting angle if I could get an interview.”

Xavier pushed harder at her mind, directing her interests.

The paper receded to the back recesses of her brain. The light burned brighter. “Cari Dolan,” she said, voice full of fear.

Xavier leaned toward another person in the crowd, and whispered the same thing. “Spread the word.”

If he were to be caught now, or tomorrow, or the next day, he needed to make sure others would finish his mission. That there was hope.

Xavier whispered to another and another, planting seeds where he could, like a gardener sowing thought. “Cari Dolan is the end of the world. She must be stopped.”

 

 

Cari folded the last of the loaned clothing. The bed was still in shambles, covers and sheets spilled to the floor. One pillow had fallen off the side of the mattress, while the other was a cloud in the center of the bed. She put the clothing to the side and reached to grab the sheet. It was way too obvious what had happened here.

“Princess Dolan, making a bed.”

She didn’t look at Mason. “My father always had us keep our own rooms tidy.” She folded and tucked an expert hospital corner to prove it.

“You okay?”

She straightened. “Well, let’s see—both a rogue angel and Khan seem to think that the world would be better off if I were dead. There’s even, supposedly, a mage saying about it. ‘Never suffer a Dolan female to live,’ is how I think it went.”

“Your father made a different call. And he was a very smart man.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m here now. I’m certainly not going to roll over and die.” That’s not how her father had raised her. He’d raised her to be the next Dolan, with all the fun and games that entailed.

“Never thought you would,” Mason said from the doorway.

In spite of it all, the news hadn’t changed anything, not really. She’d received her answers from Khan, but Maeve’s answers had actually been similar, minus the part where Cari needed to die—so everyone was in agreement there. Dolan was a great House, an old House, with a faery queen for a patron.

“Good.” Cari snapped the blanket to whip it flat across the bed.

If not for Maeve’s protection, she would have succumbed to the mage plague, which was systematically decimating the Houses. When she’d needed power, Maeve had given it to her. And even if Mad Mab did speak in a grandiose, megalomaniacal way—she was fae. They had no sense of proportion. Khan was not so different. She thought of his grumbly voice:
I would be happy to dispatch you. Blah blah blah.

“Adam is loaning us the use of his helicopter to get back to Dolan House.” Mason came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

The muscles underneath quivered in exquisite relief. He had great hands.

She sighed hugely. All she could really do was continue to be cautious where Maeve was concerned. She could work for mastery. Her body was getting stronger, better able to bear the massive amount of magic. And if she benefited from the faery’s gifts, then good for Dolan.

This place—Segue—mixed her up. Everything here was worse . . . and better. So much better.

“Custo said he would contact us when the Order had identified who the blood from the tainted Shadow had come from. Should be soon.” With Mason behind her, she felt so good. Why had she resisted during this past week? Maeve had told her to take him from the beginning.

Cari shoved Maeve out of her mind and turned to face Mason.

He’d had a look of concern in his eyes at first, but it was darkening now to match her mood. All her life, Cari had tried not to abuse her privilege by being greedy. And it hadn’t been too hard, because she’d pretty much had everything she wanted.

Except for that once, when Liv had stolen Mason back after breaking up with him. Cari had been left wanting then, and had been utterly unable to do anything about it. And now that she understood exactly how much had slipped from her grasp, she was wanting again.

“Cari?”

The periphery of her vision was occluded by a growing haze.

She wasn’t going to just give up and die. She was going to live life to the fullest. She was going to crush the person who’d killed her father. She was going to summon enough Shadow to raise Dolan to new heights. Magic swelled within her. After everything, maybe Maeve was right: Maybe she could have it all. No, she
would
have it all. The alternatives—failure, death, obscurity—did not interest her. And anyone who got in her way—

“Pitch,” Mason said.

Maeve hissed frustration.

He crushed Cari to him, his mouth taking hers, robbing her of breath. The kiss devoured, and whether from oxygen deprivation or the shock of the pleasure of his tongue rubbing on hers, she melted against him, body and heart. This close, she could feel the blue bright of his soul burning away the Other night that had permeated her umbra. Mason’s soul could defeat anything.

And his hands—
please Shadow
—his hands. Where he stroked—waist, breast, collar bone—he remade her. He’d learned her last night, and now he applied his knowledge. His hands remembered how she used to be—years ago, what seemed like forever—without this harshness in her mind.

Only when she tasted salt did she realize that she’d been crying. Who was she fooling? She was so afraid.

He must have tasted her tears, too, but he didn’t relent. He drew patterns on her skin like a mystic tracing symbols of power. The presence in her mind was banished by his touch. The clothes fell like leaves from their bodies. The tidy bed was destroyed.