Fire Raiser (20 page)

“It won’t be necessary if you cure my son of being a fag!”

“I wouldn’t even if I could!” Looking down at the exquisite little face, the perfect little body, all at once she understood everything. “You can’t stand it that you can’t control everything that doesn’t fit with your idea of perfection. You don’t want people to look at your gay son, and then look at you, and whisper, ‘Poor dear, she produced a defective.’ You want him to be your idea of perfect—because otherwise what would people think of
you?
You love the idea that other women want your husband, because that means he must be a real catch, so if he’s married to you then you must be pretty terrific as well. And lucky you, you get to prove it over and over again, because he’s really good at making you jealous—is that the only way he can get himself laid? When you get freaked out and reassert ownership?”

“Shut up. Just—shut up!”

“You stupid, pathetic—I’m warning you, Erika, right here and now. Let Troy be. He’s your son. At least pretend that you love him enough to accept him as he is. Because if you make him hate himself, I’ll hear about it. I’ll hear any rumors you try to spread and I’ll know if you ask any questions you shouldn’t be asking. And I will make your life a hell you can’t possibly imagine. Do you understand me?”

Holly didn’t wait for an answer. She walked as quickly as her trembling knees would allow to where Evan and Cam stood watching. When she got to them, she sought the shelter of her husband’s arms.

“Don’t ask,” she said when Cam drew breath to speak. “Not now. Just get me out of here.”

Twelve

HOLLY VAGUELY HEARD EVAN telling Cam to take her upstairs, that he was going stay and wait for Lulah. Whatever; she was climbing stairs with her cousin’s arm strong and fierce around her, and then walking down a corridor of lush dark scarlet carpeting and Regency-striped walls, and then inside a sitting room with a desk in one corner and an arrangement of two sofas and a chair around a low coffee table. Cam guided her to one of the sofas, shifting his embrace to her shoulders, and pulled her against him as they sat down. She stared out the window at the rain for a little while, until a blast of lightning made her flinch.

“Talk to me, Freckles.”

“It’s not so much what she said,” Holly began. “I mean, it is, but it’s so many other things besides that.”

“Start with the easiest.”

She sorted through disgust and disappointment, worry and outrage, and came up with what was not exactly easiest but certainly the most selfish—and therefore least important. “I threatened her, Cam. I’ve never threatened anybody in my life with retaliatory Witchcraft. It’s not as if it’s ever been an option for me. But I told her if I heard anything I didn’t like, I’d—”

“You admitted what you are?”

She thought back. “Not really. But I didn’t deny it, either. I let her think what she wanted. And I told her I’d make her life hell.”

“But you didn’t actually use words like—”

“—like
magic
and
Witch
? No.”

“Then don’t worry about it. What did she want?”

“IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG?” asked Bernhardt Weiss, and Lachlan turned from watching Cam escort Holly to the stairs.

“She’s always forgetting that as much as she likes crab, it doesn’t much like her,” he lied easily. “Her cousin’s taking her up to his room for a little while.”

“I’m so sorry. Perhaps someone on our staff might be of assistance?”

“She’ll be okay in a half hour or so. I’ll keep it in mind, though, thanks.” He scanned the remaining guests, all waiting for their cars—or for umbrellas so they could get to their cars without drowning. “Man, it’s really comin’ down out there, isn’t it?”

“Quite spectacular, the thunderstorms in the Shenandoah Valley. So different from hurricanes—” He stopped, then continued smoothly, “I find these storms most stimulating.”

“So do my kids, unfortunately. My daughter wants to stay up all night and watch every raindrop, like she expects them to be all different, like snowflakes. My son goes for the crayons and starts drawing on anything handy—sometimes the floor.” He chuckled. “And then there’s the dog, who just hides under whatever he can scrunch himself beneath.”

“Ah, brave children, are they? And interested in the world. In a child these are very good things.”

Evan nodded, trying to get a fix on his expression—complacency?—when a very familiar and very unexpected voice called his name. He looked over the crowd and at the main doors saw a wet blond head beside a wet red head. “Nicky?” Rudely abandoning Weiss, he threaded his way to them. “Lulah, where the hell did
he
come from?”

“Connecticut, of course,” she drawled.

“How are you, Evan?” Nicholas Orlov shook his hand, smiling, but worry furrowed his brow. “Alec and I arrived about an hour after you and Holly left. I’m afraid we got rather distracted by the children—
te jó Isten
, they’ve grown! Just since June!” He ran his fingers through his sopping hair. “You wouldn’t happen to have a towel handy, would you?”

“Upstairs, in Cam’s room.” He turned to Lulah, who was wringing rainwater out of her ponytail. “Why didn’t you tell me on the phone that Alec and Nicky were here?”

“Because I didn’t want to waste time. I have a powerful and immediate need to skin that boy alive for not bothering to mention he was coming home. A hotel, for the love of all the saints! And
this
hotel, too!”

CAM SHOOK HIS HEAD. “I don’t know why anything surprises me anymore. Will she bully the boy, or do to him what Morgan’s parents did?”

“I don’t know. I think—I think Jamey’s example is a good one, that maybe Troy will compare Jamey’s life and the way people respect him to what his mother’s attitude is, and—oh, shit, I don’t know.”

“But she’s his mother. Whatever happens, he’ll always hate himself in some way for disappointing her.” He sank back into the cushions. “Why do people do these things to each other?”

She waited until he looked at her again, and then waited some more until a tiny smile quivered at the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, “I know. Ours not to reason why—because reason has nothing to do with it.” Grasping a pillow to his chest, he started picking at its crimson silk fringe. “If Erika hadn’t overheard us talking about magic, she wouldn’t have said anything—but if she hadn’t said anything, you wouldn’t know to look out for Troy.”

“What was it your father always said? That there are no accidents, just opportunities disguised as coincidences.”

“I never did think that made any sense.”

Holly stretched out her legs to prop her feet on the coffee table. “Do you know how much I hate being a Witch but not being a real Witch? I don’t hate what I am, I hate what I’m not. Listening to Erika threaten to accuse us all of being what we are—and then listening to myself threaten
her
and knowing I’ve got nothing to back it up—”

“I always wondered how you stand it, frankly. I can do things, I can be—proactive, I guess. How did Evan put it? You get to look cute and stick your thumb in the air.”

“It’s a good thing I have talented friends and relations, then, isn’t it? Just what an otherwise helpless Spellbinder needs.”

He glanced over at her. “You’re whining again.”

“Play nice, or I won’t let you have any of my special high-octane blood tonight, and you can fumble around your secret magical staircase on your own.”

Another voice, gently shaded with the vowels of the Virginia Tidewater, said behind them, “So that’s why you’re all still here.”

Holly squeezed her eyes shut and muttered, “I swear by everything holy, if I get eavesdropped on one more time tonight, I’m going to start taking hostages.” She looked at Cam. “You left the door unlocked, didn’t you?”

“He did,” Jamey confirmed.

Cam sighed. “Evan and Lulah are coming upstairs, of course I left the door open. Also, I’m an idiot. As has been pointed out at least once tonight.” He stood and turned, facing Jamey. “Hi.”

Holly scrunched around to kneel on the sofa, arms folded over its back. “How’re you doing, Jamey?” she asked with her brightest smile.

Black brows arched eloquently.

“Is this where we ask what you heard? Or do we just assume it was kind of everything?”

“Pretty much from the part about what a good example I am. I think I can guess most of the rest.” He took a few steps forward. “Well, except for the Witch part, and whatever a Spellbinder is. You know I have to ask.”

Holly traded looks with Cam. “Your call.”

“Your secret,” he retorted.

“Yours, too. You know enough so that with my help, he doesn’t have to be told anything.”

“Holly! You think I’d do that to him?”

“Good boy.” She smiled. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Jamey shifted restlessly. “If somebody doesn’t tell me something soon—”

“What do you think, Cam? Words or deeds?”

“How’d Evan find out?”

“Accidentally—and then I demonstrated with Nicky’s vodka glasses, not having the wherewithal to establish my bona fides more directly.” She watched Jamey’s gaze cut from one to the other of them, gray eyes darkening below an ever-deeper frown. “I think we need to show him, and I think we need to use me.” She surveyed the young man head to heels—a rewarding occupation in and of itself, but she was looking for something that would convince him, something Cam could spell in such a way that Jamey would believe what they were about to tell him.

“It’s raining,” Cam said suddenly.

Holly rummaged in her skirt pocket for the little pouch containing needle and alcohol wipes she was never without. Cam’s lips moved, and Holly pricked her thumb. He touched his left index finger to her thumb, then walked around the sofa to where Jamey stood, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. Quickly, before Jamey could react, he drew an inch-wide circle on the cuff of his shirt where it protruded below the sleeve of his leather jacket.

“Stick your arm out the window,” Cam instructed.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do it,” Holly ordered.

“Do you trust me?” Cam asked at the same time.

Holly smiled to herself as Jamey obeyed—because he was obeying Cam, not her. He paced warily toward the window, unlatched it, pushed open the screen, and extended his arm. When he stepped away, his cuff was dark and wet, except for the little circle Cam had drawn. He looked down at it, then at the two of them.

“And this proves—?”

Cam murmured something under his breath, and the rainwater leached from Jamey’s shirt, turning to droplets that slipped onto the floor.

“He’s very good, is our Cam,” Holly remarked. “The material isn’t permanently waterproof except for that one little place on your cuff. For permanent, he needed me.”

“Spellbinder,” Cam murmured.

“Spell—” Jamey looked down at his sleeve, then back at Cam, and gulped.

“Uh-huh,” Holly said. “My blood. His talent is for textiles—linen, silk, wool, cotton, and so forth. Remind me to tell you sometime about the prickly heat he inflicted on this evil little troll he had for geometry, until Uncle Griff caught him at it and grounded him—magically speaking—for a month. And then there was the time he kind of overdid a linen napkin wrapped around a bottle of white wine. Instead of nicely chilled—”

Jamey interrupted, “The afghan. At your apartment that day—it was wool.”

Holly waited for Cam to say something. When it was apparent that he wouldn’t—or maybe couldn’t—she went on, “Any kind of natural fiber, really—I don’t actually know, because the only talent I have is the blood thing. What did he do to the afghan?”

“I’m sorry,” Cam said. “I had to.”

“Just to keep me from kissing you?”

Holly felt her eyes widen, and decided it was way past time for her to leave. She was almost to the door when Cam blurted out, “I
had
to!”

And she couldn’t help telling him, “No, you probably didn’t—but you can discuss that without me. And Jamey—maybe the kissing thing would go over better this time?”

With that, she slipped out the door, wishing it locked from the outside.

“YOU’RE HERE BECAUSE OF WHAT was in that letter, aren’t you?” Lachlan asked as they passed the front desk, heading for the main stairs. “And I’m not talking about the check.” He smiled sidelong at Nicky, aware that Weiss was in the vicinity, unsure if he was watching, presenting a pleasant front in case he was.

“Indeed,” Nicky replied. “Alec and I made further enquiries, and decided we’d pay you a little visit.”

Evan interpreted this to mean that more conjuring with rocks or tea leaves or candle wax or whatever had yielded a more urgent warning about Kirby or Bella. He consciously unclenched his fists and traced one hand up the polished mahogany banister as they started the climb. “All of which you’ve mentioned to Lulah.”

“Of course. We left Alec back at the house for a reason.”

Lachlan touched Lulah’s elbow. “Laura and Tim hadn’t arrived before you left?”

“I told Alec to let them in and then lock up behind them, if you know what I mean.”

He did. They reached the first landing, skirted the central display table with its gigantic arrangement of fresh flowers—one of Weiss’s amenities-that-meant-so-much—turned, and started up the next flight. At the place where Cam had walked right into the wall, Evan paused, looking for a reaction. Both continued on up the stairs. “Damn,” he muttered, and followed.

They made the turn into the hall, heading for Room 314, and almost ran into Holly.

“What in the world—? Nicky?”

DESPITE HOLLY’S ENCOURAGEMENT, the kissing thing didn’t happen. Jamey’s mind, in fact, was so far from anything of the sort that all he could do was stare at Cam, who started by looking apologetic, then uncomfortable, and finally defiant.

“Well?”

“Well, what?” Jamey snapped.

Cam flapped a hand in the air as if trying to grab a coherent word or two. At last he managed, “I don’t know what you’re thinking!”

“That makes two of us.”

“Dammit, Jamey—”

“What do I call you? What’s the correct term for—for whatever it is you are?”

“Witch. Capital W, please.”

“I’m not going to ask why you never said anything. It’s obvious why not. You never even trusted me enough to admit that you’re gay until I confronted you with it,” he said bitterly, “how could I expect—”

“That’s not—”

“—but what really pisses me off is that everybody in this fucking county seems to know about your family, and I work with Evan on an almost daily basis, and I’m over at Woodhush at least once a week, and I feel like a complete fool!”

“It’s not an uncommon reaction. Think about it from our side of things for a minute. Or—no, think about when you first figured out you were gay. It isn’t exactly something you run around announcing to the whole world.”

“It isn’t something to be ashamed of, either!”

“They call it a Witch Hunt for a reason, Jamey.” Cam shrugged and turned away. “Why do you think there are so few of us left?”

Jamey looked down at his sleeve. There was no difference in the cotton where Cam had drawn the little circle in Holly’s blood. No lingering evidence. For a moment he was tempted to go into the bathroom and run water from the sink over his cuff again, just to make sure. He was a lawyer; he liked evidence that didn’t vanish on him. But to do such a thing would indicate he didn’t believe Cam, which would be a lie. Every instinct he possessed—nothing to do with the trained intellectual legal mind—had trusted Cam at first sight.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “You’re just exercising a little self-preservation. I can understand that.”

“Can you? Oh, imagine my relief.”

“Stop it. I’m just wondering what it takes and how long it takes to earn some trust from you people.”