Love Charms (58 page)

24:
Like a Virgin Hair

I dumped the potion ingredients into the
cauldron. Newborn tears. Rat urine. Spiderweb. Toad eggs. Mushrooms.

"This isn't going to work,"
Hallow said.

"Of course it will. I'll put Rah's
hair in the potion, Dei Lucrii will drink it, and then he'll love her
—" I dropped in a berry of Poison Lyceria to replace the grasswort
—"until he dies."

Hallow sat up in Mom's hat. "Why
would he drink it? He wants YOU to drink it."

I sat down in the chair.
"Right." Crap. "We'll have to trick him."

Hallow began pacing the desk. "You
have to think this through." He stopped in front of me. "I don't want
to live in that hellhole realm. You should see the ferrets there!"

I forced a stunted laugh. "I have,
trust me."

"When Dei Lucrii sees you, he's
going to see your mark, and he'll know the game is up."

I leaned my head on the desk. "I
know, I know."

"He has to think it is to his
advantage to drink it."

I stood back up. "It's going to work
out. I know it." I pulled the bottle of sea foam from my pocket.

"You sure that is safe?"

"Nope."

Hallow jumped from the desk to the far
corner of the lair. I glanced at the portal. Everything was dark. No Caleb
would come out to save me.

"I have to try," I said.

I uncapped the bottle and tilted it, allowing
one small drop to fall into the cauldron. The inside hissed, but no explosion.
I let a breath escape and tilted it once more. Except for the hair, the potion
was complete.

The door to the lair opened, and Dad
poked his head through. "We have more company!"

"Rah?"

He nodded. "She said to give you
this." He handed me a long pink hair.

"I take it she likes him."

"He's a charmer. Wondering where you
are, though. When I said you were mixing up the potion, he jumped out of his
skin, but I assured him you had gotten fresh ingredients." He sniffed.
"He already wrote a check for the costs."

Hallow stepped out from his corner.
"Not the brightest bloke. He should be asking why a nix is mixing, if he's
trying to continue the ruse."

I shrugged. "He's just playing along.
We all are. Tell him I'll be there with it in just a moment."

"Jet, you sure you know what you are
doing? Once you come out of the lair, you're not safe."

I shrugged. "Dumb luck has gotten me
this far."

"I can't lose you, too."

"Hey, worst-case scenario, you'll
have evil overlords as grandkids."

"But this man's father..."

I bit my lip. "If I'm his
daughter-in-law, I assure you, Mom will be avenged."

Dad stepped down into the lair and pulled
me into his embrace. "I don't think I've told you how proud of you I
am."

I pressed my face into his shirt, still
sooty and reeking of smoke and dungeon. "You told me every day, Dad."

"It wasn't enough." He let me
go.

I dropped the hair into the cauldron, and
it puffed up with tendrils of pink smoke. "I guess I'll take a stab at
these words." No one had ever pronounced them for me. I'd just have to do
my best.

Powers to the east, rise to the chant.

Powers to the west, grant the spell I
incant.

Edel aye benevel arun

Constalent aye mal

Bestill amar en naught

Faire luven todos ovan

The cauldron began to bubble, and the
pink mist spurted upward. Dad and I stepped back, holding on to each other.

After a moment, it settled down. I peered
into the bowl. A thick pink liquid lay along the bottom.

"Pour it up," Dad said. He rummaged
on a shelf and produced a slender clear bottle.

I wasn't sure how to dip it out or lift
the heavy cauldron to pour, but when the bottle touched the edge of the bowl,
it didn't matter. The pink potion siphoned itself into the glass, filling it to
the brim.

"Look at that," Dad said.
"It's beautiful."

Tears pricked my eyes. Was this worth
Mom's life? I suddenly wanted to smash it against the wall and walk away. This
was nonsense, the whole thing. I think Dad knew what I was feeling as he pulled
me in. "Sometimes we have to make the best of what life brings us."

I nodded and clutched the bottle close.
"Let's do this thing."

25:
Threesomes

Hallow rode on my shoulder as we passed
through the kitchen to the living room.

Rah sat on the floor at Dei Lucrii's feet
like a supplicant, or part of his harem. She'd dressed up for the meeting in a
tawny gold dress, and her hair curled around her shoulders like a pink cloud.

Dei Lucrii seemed to be attentive to her,
and I thought for a second, hey, maybe this could work, but when he saw me, he
stood as if Rah had never existed. She frowned for a moment, then spotted the
pink potion in my hands and brightened.

"Jet! Your mark!" Dei Lucrii
stepped forward, hands out.

"Let's cut the bullshit. I know you
already knew." I stopped in the center of the room, Dad just behind me.
"You planned to trap me in the spirit world, but I was too plucky for you.
We Goldens come with some common sense, standard issue." I thrust the
potion at him.

He took the bottle. "You got it
done."

"I didn't owe it to you. I don't owe
you anything after what happened to my mother." I wouldn't accuse him, not
yet.

"I am so sorry about that accident.
This is a volatile potion. She knew it was a risk." He stared down into
the pink liquid.

I saw Dad tense and knew how hard it was
for him to just stand by. "So are you going to drink it now or what?"

He glanced up at me, still sporting the
friendly look. "Oh, no, it's not for me."

"Right. You think it's for me. You
want my everlasting love and Golden babies." I backed away a few steps. I
didn't really know where this was going, but I had to keep him here and get him
to drink it.

"Well, I had intended to use it on
another, but now that I've seen you —"

"Spare me the love talk. We're here
to strike a bargain, not act like teenagers."

"It's probably in your best interest
to go easily." He gestured to Dad and Rah. "Your friends and family
can be part of your future. Or not."

"Why try flattery when a threat is
just as good?"

"Be reasonable, Jet. Think of how
powerful our children will be."

Suddenly, I had it. I stepped forward.
"Tell me."

"I'm a Dark Enchanter. One of the
few that exist. You are a rare Golden. Our kids will have both legacies in
their blood."

"So they could choose to be good
like their mother or horrible like their father?"

"I'm not so horrible." He gave
a wide smile, and I had to confess, damn, he lit up the room.

I sidled closer to him, feeling Hallow
tense on my shoulder. "Not so horrible. Dad, Rah, can you leave us a
moment? I want to see if there is any spark here." Manufacturing sparks
was the one thing I did best.

"Come, Rah, to the kitchen."
Dad took Hallow from me. "Jet has a big decision to make." He led her
out of the living room.

"We're alone now," I said,
taking the bottle from his hand and setting it on a table. He smelled of winter
and forest, and now that I was close, his jaw was seriously chiseled, a cleft
in the chin. "Did you run a romance-novel-cover spell or something to look
like you do? I'm pretty sure you're probably ordinary under all this GQ
goodness."

"Why try a threat when flattery will
do?" His eyes narrowed, as if he were focusing in on what part of my
speech was a lie. All of it, honey. Every word.

"You like threats better?" I
grabbed his shirt and jerked him toward me. "I'm not some virginal nix who
doesn't get what breeding entails. Make me happy, or lose your equipment."

He laughed, low in his chest. "I
could get used to threats."

His mouth was inches from mine. For the
first time in the past few days, I was glad of my wealth of experience with
men. "I've been wondering about those lips. Do they taste as good as they
look?"

Dei Lucrii still didn't relax into me,
and I felt his distrust in the firm hold of his arms when he wrapped them
around me. "You decide." He bent down and crushed his lips into mine.

His kiss would have been up there, had I
never met Caleb. Rough and fiery, with a lot of kick, his arms pressing me into
his chest so hard that my hands were trapped between us. But he only had the
hot part down, and none of the tender. He probably wasn't capable of that. Dark
Enchanters couldn't afford the risk of emotions.

I was a really good fake, and I sighed
against his mouth like a lovelorn schoolgirl. "I only ask for one
thing."

"What's that?" He smiled down
at me as though he was certain I was under his spell.

"If we're going to do this, we
should do it the right way."

He released me. "And how is
that?"

"I just think that, rather than the
obvious conquer and impregnate that you're used to, we should actually join in an
equal partnership."

He crossed his arms. "I don't trust
you any more than you trust me."

I picked up the potion. "This would
ensure we didn't care."

He raised his eyebrows. "You really
think I would drink your potion?"

"I'm sure you can tell what it is.
You can't be tricked."

He accepted the bottle again, sniffed it,
and turned it in his hands as though he were reading something. Caleb had said
the bottles had labels once you knew the spell to reveal them. "I can see
that it's the passion potion."

"I say we both drink it. We'll bind
to each other rather than making me your love slave."

"Ha. No way. I don't want to bind to
anyone."

"Then watch your back. Because I
already escaped you as an untrained nix who didn't know anything. How easy will
it be to control me when I am a full-fledged enchantress?"

"I'll make sure you are under my
control."

"Will you?" I circled him.
"What about the other Goldens? You don't think they won't try to rescue
me? Or my father? He blames you for Mom's death."

"I had nothing to do with that. I
had nothing to gain from her dying."

"Really? Didn't it seem much easier
to get to me without a trained enchantress protecting me? Too bad you were too
slow. Seems I've already started figuring things out."

"You're not like any Golden our world
has ever seen."

"Exactly. So isn't it better if we
do this together? No one will want to take me away if it's clear we're happy
together, that I wasn't conquered." I moved in close again and ran my
finger down the chilly bottle. "Because otherwise, I'm going to fight you.
I've already sent out doppelgängers to rally the other Goldens. They are to
watch you, to see how you treat me." God, the bluff. I had no idea how to
contact them.

But he seemed a little shaken by this and
looked around the room, as though expecting someone to arrive.

I took the bottle from him. "If only
I drink it, you've abducted me. If we both do, then we are a match."

I tugged a strand of my hair from beneath
the headband and held it above the bottle. "Just me, and a rescue to fight
off? Or do we do it together and be stupid lovesick parents of evil
underlords?"

He pressed his hand on my forehead and
chanted something I didn't recognize.

"Is this the passion potion I sent
you?" he asked.

I couldn't control my lips.
"Yes."

"Did you modify it?"

My mouth was a direct feed that I
couldn't intercept.

"Yes."

"I thought so. What did you
change?"

"Grasswort to Poison Lyceria."

He looked down at the bottle. "You
made it permanent?"

"Till death do us part."

He let go of my forehead. "It was only
supposed to last through the birth of a child."

My mouth was my own again. "I have
abandonment issues."

"Okay," he said. He pulled a
hair from his blond ponytail. "Give me yours." He took both strands
and blew on them. They twisted together, blond on blond. He let them fall into
the bottle.

The potion hissed. "It's done,
then," he said.

"All but the drinking," I said.
"Ladies first?"

He passed it to me. I took a sip.

"Small for me and small for you,
then bigger for me and bigger for you?"

"All right." He accepted the
bottle and also sipped.

Sparks started flying through my head. I
grabbed the bottle and drank again, a hearty swig this time. I stumbled a
moment, feeling light and happy. "Here." I passed the potion to him.
"This is too much fun."

He watched me a moment, waiting.

In the firelight, he looked so striking
and young. "You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," I said,
and meant it. But another tug began to move inside my belly. Where was Rah?

He smiled and took the bottle back and
also gulped it down.

I ran his hand down the ponytail.
"I've always liked long hair on men." I meant that too, but still the
nag persisted. Where was Rah? I wanted her with an urgent need. I had to see
her right now. "Where did Rah go?"

"You mean that human girl?"

I heard voices in the kitchen. "I
have to go right now." I pulled away from him.

He grabbed for my hand. "It's time
to go home. We can use your portal. The bad-intentions spell won't keep out
your match."

My match. Caleb. Thinking his name drew
out something else in me, but still, the strident need for Rah kept me moving.
"Let me go to the kitchen just for a moment." He watched me, and I
saw the change hit him as well. I dashed to the door.

Rah and Dad stood by the sink, talking
quietly. Just seeing her made me feel better. I rushed up to hug her.

"Um, Jet, are you okay?" Her
eyes went wide. "Did you drink the potion?"

"We both did!"

"Where is she?" Dei Lucrii's
voice boomed from the living room. "Where is Rah?"

Dad headed toward the door. "I think
it's working."

Rah smoothed her hair. "I'm coming,
my dear!"

I ran after her. "Wait!" I
didn't want her to leave me.

Dad stopped so suddenly just outside the
door that Rah smashed into him, and then I crashed into her. The living room
was blinding with golden light.

"We have company," Dad said.

I peered around him. Three Golden
Enchantresses stood together in the living room, frowning at Dei Lucrii.
"Who performed an illegal love enchantment?" one demanded.

Everyone turned to look at me.