Magical Weddings (19 page)

“No, I mean what has this painting to do with weddings?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing to do with weddings at all.”

“Then what reason does The Priest have to take it?”

Marius Runyon went still and turned his head to regard her strangely, almost like the bird staring outward at the viewer from the Graves painting.

“Well, we’re certainly not going to abandon it with Drayhome.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying The Priest is not prepared to leave something as exquisite as this masterwork behind, nor the other choice items he’s instructed me to collect when we leave the estate to the humans.”

“Humans? I thought…I mean this is the last wedding to be held here, but–”

Runyon’s eyes widened briefly. She’d surprised him, but something else animated his expression, too, delight.

“You mean you don’t know? The humans of Breens Mist want it. This.” He opened his arms wide to indicate the house and everything else. “They are of the opinion it belongs to them.”

“How could they think–?”

“Spirit, the fool, never recorded a deed.”

“But Drayhome belongs to us, The Rede,” she said. “It was here decades before there ever was a Breens Mist. If anything, we own the town. Breens Mist was built on Drayhome land.”

“No record, no title, no ownership,” Runyon said.

“So fix that,” she told him, voice raised.

“The Priest believes leaving is the best course of action.”

“I don’t care what The Priest believes.”

He took a step back.

“Really,” he said. “You should.”

A warning. With it, Runyon’s own sense of entitlement and power erupted, causing her to flinch. She may not see it, but it singed the edges of her own gift.

“Drayhome is the only place that can’t be hidden from the humans,” Runyon continued. “The Priest has decided our connection to it leaves us far too vulnerable and thus the wiser choice is to give it up.”

“I…”

“For the good of us all,” Runyon said. “You do want what’s best for your fellow witches and warlocks, don’t you Colleen?”

She shook her head. “No!”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He made a play at sincerity, taking a step toward her. For a horrifying moment she thought he intended to lay a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. She stepped back, out of his reach. He stopped, unperturbed by her withdrawal.

“I’m also very sorry to know I was the one who had to tell you,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Ax was sent here to–”

“What? Evict me?”

“Help you make the transition.”

“To where?”

“I’d say that’s up to you,” he said. “Wouldn’t you?”

“When?”

“I’ve arranged for two moving trucks to be here on Thursday. My people will load up with the items I’ve tagged once the wedding reception has run its course late that night. I’d suggest you be ready to leave by morning.”

Like the recipient of a deathblow, Colleen lost the ability to breathe. Shock thrust its way through her chest and momentarily stopped her heart.

Why didn’t Ax tell me?

“Now, I know we’re both on tight schedules,” Runyon said. “Do you mind if I see myself through the house? I think it will go much more quickly if I can do this on my own.”

Preternatural hush fell over the house, absolute silence. Until it happened, Colleen had never been aware of how many barely audible sounds filled Drayhome from moment to moment, heated air expanding outward from radiators, water swishing through pipes, breezes dragging at the windows, wood constantly settling and resettling, electrical motors and components inside appliances and clocks and fans discreetly humming, mice in the walls, birds fussing in their nests beneath the eaves. All of it ceased. Her mind conjured the weird notion that even the atoms in the solid surfaces around her, forever restless yet vibrating at a frequency no witch or human ear could detect, came to an abrupt halt.

Incredibly, Runyon failed to notice. Her eyes recorded his afterthought of a smile, the finality of it. He was done dealing with her. Without waiting for an answer, he strolled under the archway leading into the music room and left her.

Ax is part of this?

With a sharp twinge, her heart restarted. She drew in a breath. Sound rushed back into the vacuum, joined by hurt and anger.

Ax is here to betray you.

The exhaustion of past days got tossed on the back burner. Colleen kindled her rage, feeling the force of it grow, build.

****

Ax straightened up with a felled Oregon ash in his arms. Probably a victim to ash borers, it was a relatively young tree when it had died and toppled this last year. He estimated it at eight years old, still a hefty armload when you included the stump, roots caked thick with dirt.

Other than the ash and a few loose branches scattered by winter storms, the secondary parking area was in good shape, the estate’s side entrance free of ruts and potholes. He’d already cleared the branches, gathering and dumping them in the back of his pickup. Get rid of the tree, and he could cross this one off the list. At close to twenty feet from crown to stump, it wouldn’t fit in the truck bed, thus he decided to find a convenient place to toss it.

Not like anyone will be here to care after Thursday
.

And that burned him. The situation sucked, wrong in so many ways.

Still, it wouldn’t do for the dead tree to be seen by wedding guests or anyone driving along the highway just a few yards from here. He spotted a likely place toward the far end of the lot and strode in that direction, the tree’s dried up branches bouncing and scratching the ground to one side, roots scattering stones and clumps of soil to the other.

The more he thought about it the angrier he became with The High Priest. His plan to rob them of Drayhome was a complete betrayal of the trust placed in him by the community. Ax didn’t doubt Ramsay Wise’s ambitions extended far beyond this one political move. The warlock wouldn’t be satisfied until his dominance over them was firmly cemented.

I’d so like to ram this tree up his magical–

Ax gazed around, brows furrowed.

Gooseflesh rose on his heavily muscled forearms.

Something’s wrong
.

Quiet like he’d never experienced in his life.

He strained to hear normal everyday noises around him. No leaves rustled, no breeze stirred past his ears, no birds or river sounds, only numbing silence, the type you got nowhere else but a sensory depravation chamber.

What the hell?

Not really paying attention, he stumbled. Automatically, he looked down, saw nothing for him to have tripped over, while at the same time, the more heavy stump side of the tree dropped and slammed to the ground. Roots snagged in a hole he’d swear hadn’t been there a second before, the trunk bent back on itself like a whip the size of a… a tree…and a second later he found himself sailing through the air, whacked off his feet by a deceased Oregon ash.

Ax landed hard and ignominiously, face first, and rolled to the edge of the drive where it met the highway.

His head rang, though other than a bit of road rash to one side of his chin, he was unharmed. He lay wrapped up like larva in a giant cocoon of black wool, his clóca having employed magic to keep him from breaking anything. Grumbling, he fought his way out of the cloak’s heavy folds, shrugging them away out of sight again as he stood, and turned to look back where he’d come from.

His pickup, driverless, barreled down on him at close to forty miles per hour.

He cried out, more of a involuntary squeak than anything manly, and threw himself out of the vehicle’s path. Continuing forward, the truck rolled across the highway, directly into the oncoming path of a grey sedan, the driver of which slammed on his brakes, dodged around the obstacle at the last second and still had the presence of mind to flip off Ax as he went by. From there, the truck drove itself into the swampy ditch on the other side of the road and gurgled to a stop.

Great. That’s just great
.

He heard his name.

“Ax Paxton, you miserable son of a bitch.”

Colleen, power seething from her, white and hot, stood at the top of the driveway leading to the house.

“Lackey? Lackey is far too generous a descriptor for you,” she shouted. “Don’t you even think of setting foot on this property again. You gutless pawn! You cringing, ass-licking toady!”

To be fair, Ax had never licked ass. He’d done nothing of the sort. He’d been known to cringe, but more as a form of commentary than fear, and never in front of The High Priest or anyone on the conclave.

Pawn? Toady?

Colleen calls them like she sees them
.

He sat dispiritedly on the couch in his fifth floor loft in downtown Breens Mist, nursing a bottle of oatmeal stout.

He’d wondered how Colleen could have had such a subdued reaction to the news she had to leave Drayhome. He never figured Lysée and the others had only known part of the story to pass on. Stupid of him to rely on gossip to do his work for him.

Gutless?

God, he hated that one. Pawn and toady he figured he’d earned. But gutless?

Yup. Admit it. She’s nailed it.

Ramsay Wise had told him to move Colleen out and he hadn’t fought it. Wise could cremate him on sight if he so desired. How did you say ‘no’ to someone with the ability to turn your insides to an ashy sludge?

Pretty frickin’ dark for a gift in Breens
.

Usually, witches and warlocks received talents beneficial to others, abilities linked to food, the weather, healing, and intangibles such as Lysée’s gift of joy. Other than gifts given to the five elementals, the place magic didn’t dole out killing powers, which meant Wise’s gift had probably been more benign at the start and he’d learned to twist it into its current freakish configuration. As far as Ax knew, The Priest had never used this power on another living being, only shown what he could do with it—using a dead horse for the demonstration—but that was enough. Those who witnessed that little show spoke about it in whispers only. No one had questioned his position as head of the conclave since.

Wise liked to think of himself as on par with an elemental, but The High Priest didn’t come anywhere close. An elemental not only possessed a much wider range of abilities but an innate sense of justice that rarely wavered. Protection of others was hard wired into them, and often cost them, as evidenced by the deaths of those holding the Water and Fire talents before Ax arrived in Breens, and, he suspected, Spirit’s mysterious disappearance.

Just because Wise had never used his power against another didn’t mean he wouldn’t, or even utilize it to a non-lethal degree to inflict pain. Underlining everything The Priest
suggested
be done on Breens Mist’s behalf remained that subtle threat. Not that his colleagues on the conclave were archangels and cherubim either. Ax had noted an undercurrent of darkness moving through Breens in the last few years, one creeping ever closer to the surface.

Drayhome is the start
.

Sudden intuition rattled him.

And Colleen squarely in the conclave’s sights
.

Ax had always been intended as the remote option, a way of keeping their hands clean of the hint of scandal. He was the conclave’s lone muscle, a token duty until now, mere grunt labor and wedding bouncer. However, by ordering Ax to remove Colleen, Drayhome’s voice, they’d turned him from designated warlock, who broke up inebriated fights and got everyone too wasted to travel tucked safely into guest beds, into their chief hatchet man. They’d made him part of their plans, whether he liked it or not.

Lackey. Pawn. Toady.

What would happen to Colleen if he refused to do it? Or, if she, with Drayhome’s help, threw him out again and he failed in his mission? Would she then be in danger from Wise? Would he hurt her?

Not happening. Even if he decides to turn me into an over-microwaved potato
.

Why couldn’t Ax have been given a talent Wise feared, instead of the one he had? He’d helped out plenty of humans over the years, but none among his kind. Not a single member of The Rede had ever felt the need to employ Ax’s gift.

Damn. I’m going to buy it on Thursday
.

He would do his best to get Colleen to safety, though. Kicking and screaming, if necessary, but he would yank her from harm’s way.

Beside Colleen, the real losers in all of this were his fellow witches and warlocks. By cheating them of their spiritual home, The Priest weakened the community. Drayhome brought everyone together. It united them several times a year and reminded them that they owed their lives to one another. It grated on him that Wise believed the place disposable.

Weary-eyed, Ax gazed out the loft’s time-hazed windows. Only Healing House, several blocks over, had a better view of the river coursing through town and the Cascades range, white-capped mountains ever in the distance. His home of the last three decades had been a find, the humans apparently forgetting the building in which he lived had five floors, not four. That was how most of witchkind acquired their residences. They moved in and made over discarded places so long overlooked by humans their existence came into question and a lucky warlock such as himself could use a bit of magic to sever that public memory altogether.

Didn’t there used to be another floor on this thing?
one of his downstairs neighbors might have wondered to himself, if Ax had downstairs neighbors. Though structurally sound, the rest of the place was vacant, for all intents and purposes, derelict.

He’d loved living here. It was comfortable; it had belonged to him. In the coin of his realm, however, it was an extremely valuable piece of real estate. Too juicy to let go to waste.

Time to say good-bye
.

He couldn’t save himself.

He may not be able to rescue Colleen.

But one thing he might be able to accomplish was keeping Drayhome out of human hands.

He headed for the library and the warlock he knew who inhabited a certain unremembered room in its basement.