Something About Witches (9 page)

She struggled against it, the unique, seductive touch of his magic, but it held her as easily as a butterfly in a net, easing her upright without damage. Unfortunately, it also gave him the needed moment to catch up to her. Heedless of their precarious perch, she tried to shove him away. In answer, he seized her arms, swung her to face him, one foot braced on the stair above hers, the other just below, caging her against the railing. It also put them almost eye level despite the significant difference in their heights. “Slow down, damn it.”

“You son of a bitch. You had no right.
No right
.” She punched at him. “Let go of me. Let go of me now.”

Catching her wrists, he set her down hard on her backside. He put himself on the step just above, clamping her between his thighs as she struggled. She snapped at his arm like a rabid coyote before he pulled her wrists out from her body, taking his flesh out of reach.

“Calm down. It wasn’t him.”

Ruby’s gaze jerked to the base of the stairs where Raina leaned against the rail. Though it was her usual provocative pose, the woman’s gaze was hard, her mouth tight. “He had no more idea than you did. I gave him the choice of using it, just like I gave it to you.”

No one blames the Devil…. They make the choice.

It took a full minute for her to process it, to believe it, and when she did, what swept through her was devastating. If Derek hadn’t made her sit, her legs would have buckled. “Raina…. why would you do this? You’re supposed to be my friend.”

Try as she might, Ruby couldn’t keep her voice from breaking. Derek’s grip eased, registering her distress. She wouldn’t look at him, though she couldn’t push away from the strength flanking her when she didn’t seem to have any of her own.

“I
am
your friend,” Raina said sharply, though she’d gotten a little whiter. “And you never asked if anyone would be sharing the room with you.”

“Oh, Raina. That is total bullshit.” Ruby fought to rein in her emotions. It was like trying to call back a flood after the dam had shattered, but she had contained a lot worse than this, right? She had to pull her shit together to get Derek to let her go. Though it was painful, she made herself look up at him.

At least Raina was telling the truth there. He looked as floored and pissed as she felt, but there was speculation in his gaze, too. That quick mind was reviewing what had happened, what the magic had revealed about her true state of mind. Panic gripped her anew. “Let go of me, Derek. Please. I’m not going to fall now. I’m going to go to the bottom of the stairs and kill Raina.”

“As much as I’ve dreamed of hearing you say that, now’s not the time.” His jaw flexed. “Maybe this opens some things up. Things we need to talk about.”

“No, it doesn’t, and no, we don’t.” She extricated herself,
relieved when he released her, though he rose with her, his alert expression showing his readiness to catch her again if she started to fall. It made things hurt, made her want to scream and rage further. Instead, she bottled it up like a potion, put all those incendiary feelings under pressure and stalked down the stairs.

She ignored the fact her body was still trembling from what she’d experienced with him. Not only that, but it now wanted the real thing, merely from sitting that close to him. Her shoulder hurt. What the hell had happened there? Reaching back awkwardly, she clawed down the neck of her shirt. Nothing. The skin was smooth, but the nerve endings were acting as if the skin had been seared by that brand.

It was probably one of the perks Raina offered. The client got a souvenir, a magical hickey with an intensity and placement appropriate to one’s deepest needs. It would probably linger in nerve memory for several days, drawing the mind back to that room like a lemming to a cliff edge.

Raina held her position. If she’d suspected the state of Ruby’s mind, she would have run. Or maybe not. From the flash in her gaze, Raina looked like she was spoiling for the fight. It made the ache in Ruby’s gut worse. She reached the bottom step.

“Why would you do this to me?” she repeated. “Why, Raina?”

“Why would you lie to me for three years? Use fucking
soul magic
on me?”

That panic frog jumped in her throat, but it also triggered shut-down mode. Her emotions closed up like slamming doors. Ruby couldn’t say she was sorry, couldn’t take it back, so she simply went wooden. “This was about payback?”

“No, damn it. You’ve been tapping Dark magic.”

Ruby tightened her hand on the banister, suppressing the knee-jerk reaction to look toward Derek. It didn’t matter. Raina scoffed. “Yeah, he knows, too. He picked it up the first second he saw you at your shop. Messing with Dark forces is like
being strung out on drugs, dove. It gets harder and harder to hide the addiction, and it’s starting to show on you, big-time.”

Derek had come farther down the stairs. Ruby was sure those dark blue eyes were as keen as the blades he usually carried. “You can turn off the lights,” Raina continued. “Hide all you wish, but that room proved what you want is still in there, still haunting you in the dark. If you don’t think forcing you to see that is what a friend does, then you don’t know what friends are. Something is eating you alive, and if you don’t figure out a way to let it out, to let us help, it’s going to swallow you right up.”

Ruby stared at her. Every muscle was rigid from hurt and betrayal, but she couldn’t really blame them. They didn’t understand. They would never understand. It already
had
swallowed her right up. “Did we actually….”

“No.” Raina shook her head. “It’s all mind interaction. Until you were on these stairs, you didn’t even physically touch.”

There was something so sad about that, having such an intimate fantasy, with no actual touching. It all made her sad.

“I’ll be taking Theo with me,” Ruby said. Her voice was even. Calm as death. A stupid metaphor, since there was nothing calm about death. Death was just…. silent. Eternal. A cold wind blowing across stone on a desolate hillside. “I’ll give him a sleeping draught to make him comfortable. For the sake of our friendship these many years, and with no other choice, I’ll have to trust you with that other matter I gave you. But when I get back, we’re done. This is unforgivable, Raina.”

“Nothing is unforgivable, Ruby. Not when it’s done out of love.”

The Darkness surged forward at that. It barked out of her throat in a harsh, shrill laugh. From the startled look on Raina’s face, and the sudden tension she felt from Derek, Ruby knew they detected it, that force that gave her laugh a sibilant echo. “Yeah,” she said. “You keep thinking that.”

I hope you never have to face the truth the way I did.

Pushing past Raina, she left the house, her back straight,
though her body felt brittle as glass. Neither one tried to stop her.

T
HE MOMENT THE DOOR CLICKED SHUT
, D
EREK WAS
down the stairs. He looked torn between wanting to go after Ruby and having to deal with Raina. Raina would have preferred the former, because she wasn’t in the mood to deal with a male tantrum, but he pivoted on one booted foot, squared off with her. “What the
hell
is the matter with you?”

Raina arched a perfect brow. “You should be thanking me. I’ll bet you didn’t know your little witch had such naughty thoughts—”

Derek caught her by the throat. Raina found herself slammed against the wall, pinioned there not just by a powerful, angry man’s strength, but by the energy that swirled out from him like a furnace blast. She faced the sorcerer who was a Guardian of the Light, who’d gone toe-to-toe with some of the Underworld’s most frightening demons.

“You forget yourself, witch,” he said with chilling menace, underscoring it. “Cut the shit.” That branding iron was suddenly in his hand, called from the room above as simple as a blink, a mere rearrangement of matter and air currents. He pressed the unyielding steel against her windpipe. “This part was real. You made me hurt her, cause her pain. You betrayed her trust.”

“It’s a tracking mark,” Raina said with a calmness she didn’t feel. He could shove the iron up into her brain with one effortless movement, charge it with energy and turn her into a shower of confetti over her pricey Persian rugs. But that didn’t bug her as much as him holding her helpless like this. Being manhandled just pissed her off in ten different ways. “Unable to be removed. You’ll never lose her again. That brand is your mark, a physical connection between the two of you that can’t be broken. You can thank me after you get your goddamn hands off me.”

With an oath, he threw the branding iron away from himself. It shimmered and vanished before it touched the floor. He let Raina go, though, his lip curling in a silent snarl as he moved back to the stairs, rubbing a hand over his face and the back of his neck. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want an answer. I won’t ask twice. What happened to her, Raina?”

She had half a mind to give him a nasty jolt, try to turn him into one of Circe’s pigs, but she couldn’t outmatch him. Beyond that, something more important was at stake than his bad manners, or the possibility that she
had
pushed things a little far. Well, tough shit. She had as much right to act on her hurt and anger as they did.

“I can tell you what I know, but it’s what I don’t know that’s key to it all. She lost a baby, Derek. Yours, in case you had any doubt.”

The anger evaporated, sucked out of the room. When he turned, a stunned look on his face, Raina’s own temper settled. He actually went a shade paler, making her feel an annoying pinch of regret. “Derek….”

He held up a quelling hand, his jaw tightening. “Keep talking.” But his voice had a hoarse note, and there was a swirl of thoughts moving behind the keen eyes. She pressed her lips together.

“It was during the Unseelie conflict.”

He’d told Ruby he had to deal with a problem in the Fae world, and, of course, while he was there, he wouldn’t be able to contact her. While he’d teasingly assured Ruby it wouldn’t be like the stories, where he emerged three hundred years after everyone he knew was dead and gone, he had warned time moved a little differently there and he might be out of touch for a few months. Raina had seen the worry in Ruby’s eyes, the worry she always had when Derek left her to face Goddess-knew-what.

It turned into the second longest stretch of time Ruby had been out of contact with Derek since their relationship had begun. As a few months stretched into more, the impending
baby had been a blessing for a lot of reasons. Aside from the obvious distraction it provided, Raina could tell carrying his child changed Ruby for the better, settled some things in her. Gave her more confidence in herself. She’d told Raina straight out that when Derek came back this time, she was going to want to make some commitments with him she’d never been willing to consider before.

“That’s a good thing,” Raina had told her bluntly. “Because Derek Stormwind is as old-fashioned as they get. I don’t care how old he is; that baby’s not going to be born without a ring on your finger.”

If he gets back in time.
Raina had held that thought back, but she knew Ruby appreciated hearing the other, even if the thought of marriage turned her an amusing three shades whiter. Raina guessed that Ruby’s idea of commitment with Derek had been a more gradual plan. But no matter how much she goaded him, Raina knew men pretty damn well, and she had no doubt that Ruby Night Divine was it for Derek. He’d just been waiting all these years for her to become her own person, and reach that point herself.

The tragedy was, for the first time in her life, Ruby had hit that sweet spot. With the baby growing inside her, there’d been a peace and quiet strength to her that Raina and Ramona both had been glad to see, even as they teased her unmercifully about it.

“The Unseelie conflict.” Derek’s expression clouded. “I was there for two months, and when I came back out, thirteen had passed here. Damn mage tricked me, got the upper hand and distorted time.”

Raina nodded. “She discovered she was pregnant about a month after you left. She made it to eight months. Knew it was going to be a girl.”

Her voice had softened, her words getting more clipped, because, hard-edged as she could be, they’d shopped for that baby, planned for it. She and Ramona were going to be her god-aunts, Goddess help the poor babe.

Derek sank down on the bottom steps, a big man whose strength was suddenly not so certain. Damn it, she really was a complete and total bitch. She’d told the man he’d lost his daughter the same way she’d tell him the basement of his house had flooded, or his car had been wrecked by a careless relative.

She couldn’t fix that, but she did keep her tone quiet, gentle, now. And she kept going, because she knew he needed to hear all of it to understand. “She was crossing the street with some groceries, was thinking of other things, in her head like she can be sometimes, and a car came around the corner….”

“You were already out here. In North Carolina. She was all alone.” He spoke stiffly.

Raina recalled that anguish, a familiar constriction in her chest. “Yes. She didn’t let me know what had happened until she was out of the hospital, a week after. She called, told me not to come, if you can believe it.” Her tight, hard smile had nothing but brittle pain in it. “I should have known something was wrong, because as closely linked as we three are…. we should have felt something when it happened.

“I was on the next plane out, and of course Ramona went with me. Shows how upset I was, not thinking how likely it was she could have caused the plane engine failure.” The grim humor was a quick flash, not enough to dispel the seriousness of the moment. “When we got there, Ruby had changed. She would get cold so abruptly, so distant. In hindsight, I was catching the whiff of Dark magic infecting her, but it was overlaid with so much grief, I missed it. Then you came back. I thought that would break her out of it, but instead you left.”

“The soul spell.” He spat it out like the vile curse it was.

“Yes. I really wish I’d figured that one out sooner. But here’s the deal, what I don’t know.”