Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (21 page)

“Good luck,” she tells me as she gathers the papers she’s been working on. “I’ll stop by in a few days, just to check on you. See how you’re doing.”

“Oh, right. Of course. I can hardly wait.”

She comes around the table and pulls me into a hug—which feels a little ridiculous to me since I tower over her by about a foot. Still, submitting to her patchouli-scented embrace is easier than fighting it.

Finally she lets go. “I don’t know what your mother was so worried about. You are just delightful.”

“That’s what I keep telling her.” She starts out, but I don’t turn away until I’ve made sure that she is actually on the sidewalk, walking away from Beanz as fast as her Technicolored cowboy boots can take her. Then I head back to the counter—and Travis, who is currently surrounded by flirty, giggling high school girls who haven’t quite figured out yet that they’re barking up the wrong tree.

As I round the corner, I toss Salima’s gifts—binder, boots, books and most especially herbs—into the closest trash can. Salima might be nice, but that doesn’t mean I trust her, or my mother, any farther than I can throw them. Magical workout be damned. I’ll stick with the gym.

*    *    *

Travis finally gets to go home, after asking a number of pointed questions about what’s going on with me. I fill him in on the basics—only because I figure he has the right to know after the way he’s come through for me today—and he turns unexpectedly serious, asks if there’s anything he can do to help.

I tell him I have things under control, but when I make my way out of the café at four o’clock, I find him leaning negligently against the building in the back.

“What are you doing here?” I demand. “I thought you had a hot date for this afternoon?”

“I postponed it a couple of hours.” He follows me to my car, climbs in the passenger seat before I can even get my door open.

“What are you doing?” I repeat, incredulously.

“Making sure you get home safely.”

My heart melts just a little over the fact that this twenty-year-old kid cares enough to look after me like this. But still, it’s unnecessary. “I’m fine, Travis. I don’t think anyone is going to hurt me between here and my house.”

The look he gives me is filled with annoyance. “Yeah, and you thought your little walk by the lake last night wouldn’t be a problem either.” He shakes his head at my stupidity. “I’m not asking you to bear my children, Xandra. Just to let me ride home with you.”

I don’t argue with him after that, though I do offer to drop him at his apartment—he lives a couple of miles closer to UT—but he ignores me. Instead, he waits for me to park, then walks me to my front door.

Once I have it unlocked and open, I tell him, “I think I’ve got it from here.”

He just nods, wraps an arm around my shoulder and pulls me in for a very un-Travis-like hug. “Be careful, okay?” he whispers. “An awful lot of trouble came looking for you today and I kind of like you in one piece.”

He calls that trouble? I wonder what he’d say if he ever saw Declan? Probably tell me to run for the hills while he distracts him—with his body, if possible.

“Thanks, Travis.” I hug him back and he pulls awkwardly away. For all of his sassiness and teasing, Travis isn’t big on displays of affection, public or otherwise.

The last thing I see before I close the front door is Travis walking down the block, his skinny shoulders hunched against the wind.

Though I think I put on a pretty good face at the coffeehouse, I’m dragging. Exhaustion hit about two hours ago and just getting down the hall to my room seems to take more effort than I’ve got right now. I tell myself what I really want is a shower and twelve uninterrupted hours of sleep, but the truth is I’m terrified of going to bed. Terrified of the nightmares I’ll have when I close my eyes and terrified of what will happen to my life in those hours of downtime.

I think back over what Nate said, about how he believes Declan is responsible for Lina’s murder. I tried to tell him that wasn’t the case, but I know he didn’t believe me. I know he’s the homicide detective and that he’s supposed to know best, but I just don’t buy it. Yes, I know that in ninety percent of cases when a woman turns up dead it’s the boyfriend or husband, but that means in ten percent of cases it
isn’t
the boyfriend—I studiously avoid feeling anything when I think about Declan sleeping with Lina, now or before. It’s not my business after all. Especially since I have a hard time imagining a warlock as powerful as Declan resorting to killing in such an ugly manner.

Do I think Declan is capable of murder? Under the right circumstances, absolutely. He isn’t a dark warlock for nothing.

Do I think he would do murder like that? No. I really don’t. Especially not someone he cares about. And
especially not when I consider the malicious feelings that emanated from the body, the sadistic pleasure that turned my stomach even more than feeling what the killer had done to Lina. To put it simply, that evil didn’t feel like the man who had kissed and comforted me so tenderly all those years ago.

Could I be wrong? Maybe.

Do I think I’m wrong? No, I really don’t.

Which means Nate is partially right. The killer might be doing all this in order to set someone else up, though I personally think he takes too much pleasure in the deaths for it to be just that. Nate thinks the person being set up is me, but I can’t help wondering if it’s Declan instead. The thought makes me sick. Especially since I’m somehow involved. I’ve spent years dreaming of telling Declan off for what happened in the forest that night, but the idea that I’m being used to hurt him is more awful than I can stand.

Still, I don’t know what to do about it. And even if I did, it would have to wait a few hours. I need a nap, desperately.

But when I open my front door, it’s to find Lily sitting on the sofa with Brandon, while Kyle lounges on my favorite chair. The big black trunk that functions as a coffee table as well as storage for my unused pairs of cowboy boots holds a wine bottle, three wineglasses and what looks to be a hastily put together fruit and cheese tray.

I can’t help it. I look at Lily like she’s crazy. Does she really think, after everything that happened last night, that this is what I need? To entertain the guy I inadvertently ditched? So much for being psychic.

“Hey, Xandra,” Kyle says, shoving to his feet. “Are you feeling any better?”

Do I look like I’m feeling better?
I don’t say it, but I come close—which is yet another clue that this little get-together
is a bad idea. I mean, I haven’t glanced in a mirror lately but I’ve got a pretty good idea about what I look like and better is definitely not it.

“Not really,” I tell him. “We were slammed at work today and last night was…difficult.”

“We heard.” Brandon speaks up from where he’s cuddled on the couch with Lily. “A homicide detective got in contact with us this morning, to verify your alibi. I have to admit it freaked me out a little, especially when we turned on the news and saw the murder at Town Lake. The newscaster mentioned that the body was found by an unidentified woman and we put two and two together.”

“You did?” I can’t keep the horror from my voice. The last thing I need is to add being hounded by reporters to this mess.

“Oh, don’t worry. We won’t tell anyone.” Kyle places a comforting hand on my lower back. Or at least, I think it’s meant to be comforting but all it really does is piss me off. It’s a pretty personal move, and one date or not, I don’t like Kyle assuming that he has the right to touch me like that. I take a couple of steps away, until I’m just out of reach.

“They wouldn’t do that.” Lily pipes in for the first time. “Kyle and Brandon were worried, so they stopped by to check on you. Make sure you were doing okay. To be sick and then have to deal with what you did”—she shudders—“is awful.”

It is awful, and I can’t help wondering how much Lily has told them. Normally she’s very closemouthed, but she’s crazy about Brandon and I’m afraid confiding in him wouldn’t feel like a betrayal of me. But the last thing I need is for a bunch of wizards to find out what’s going on here—especially one who works for the ACW. If things get worse, as those damn tarot cards say that they will, I don’t want to have a bunch of people privy to the
inner workings of the case. Especially Council members. It will just make it that much harder to ensure Nate, Declan and I all escape this with our lives.

Which is just one more reason why I want to lie down for a while instead of making small talk with two guys who don’t interest me at all.

I start to excuse myself—surely, after the night I had they can’t take offense if I back out of whatever plans are brewing—but I glance over at Lily and she looks so happy snuggled up next to Brandon that I just don’t have the heart to do it.

So instead of showering and falling face-first into bed as I had originally planned, I end up sitting on the floor next to Kyle, eating grapes and talking about sports, Austin, Ipswitch and the ACW. None of those topics interest me particularly, but they keep Kyle talking happily, which means all I have to do is pretend to listen while I zone and remember to make an appropriate noise every once in a while.

Still, when he starts talking about the Council members like he knows them, I get interested despite myself. As a group, they’re notoriously reclusive and while my parents have met them all at one time or another—usually when their policies clashed with the Council’s wishes—I’ve met only three Council members in my whole life, two of whom have since died.

“What exactly do you do for the ACW?” I ask when Kyle stops to take a drink. “I thought you headed up their PR team?”

“I do. But I’m also an enforcer of sorts,” he tells me with a grin that I find a little creepy under the circumstances. “It’s all tied together.”

“An enforcer? Of what?”

“Council laws, mostly. Your coven is one of the best, but some of the others aren’t so good about following Council dictates and sometimes even the basic rules of
Heka. I travel around, making sure all is going well in those covens. And, of course, I also help the Council deal with other magical creatures. The cats and fairies are particularly troublesome,” he says with a grin.

I’m intrigued, despite myself. “Really? What kind of trouble do they get into?”

“The leopards think everything’s a game and they hate following rules—any rules. I spend most of my time reminding them of the agreements that exist between all the different magical groups and convincing them to play along. As for the Fey”—he shakes his head ruefully—“they just don’t want to listen to anyone and it infuriates them that the Council thinks they have the right to tell anyone who isn’t a witch what to do.”

I kind of agree with them. The ACW is made up exclusively of witches, wizards and warlocks—so obviously, that is where their loyalties lie. How can anyone expect the other groups—the shifters, the Fey, the water creatures, the blood mages—to live under our rules then, especially when they don’t have vested representation in the Council that sets the rules?

My parents and I have had this discussion numerous times, and while they always come down on the side of the ACW, I’ve noticed that lately, even they are beginning to see that such uneven representation can only lead to problems.

But when I say as much to Kyle, he shuts me down pretty quickly. “You’re not old enough to remember what it was like before the Council seized control,” he tells me.

“And you are? They seized control from the others over seventy years ago.”

He smiles. “I’m older than I look.”

“Obviously.”

We move on to other topics, but I never really get over what Kyle said. I know his paychecks come from the
ACW, but still, his blind allegiance to a group that I find both power hungry and narrow-minded disturbs me.

As for the fact that he’s so much older than I am…that kind of bugs me too. It shouldn’t, especially considering the fact that Declan’s age has never bothered me and he is obviously older than Kyle.

But Kyle isn’t Declan, a little voice whispers in the back of my head and I have to agree. Declan might be dark and mysterious and I might not be able to count on him, but he isn’t corrupt like the Council is. Or, at least, he wasn’t eight years ago when we talked, and while I don’t know much about Declan, I remember his vehemence on the subject and doubt anything has changed in less than a decade.

Suddenly, I’ve had enough. I’m tired, miserable, stressed out and more worried than I can ever remember being in my life. Sitting here making small talk with a guy who seems very nice but who is obviously not going to knock my socks off anytime soon, seems like a waste of time.

I stand up abruptly, not even bothering to wait for Kyle to finish the story he’s telling about his beloved Lakers. “I’m sorry,” I say when he pauses and everyone looks at me. “I didn’t sleep at all last night and I’m still not feeling very well. I think I need to get to bed.”

“Oh, of course.” Brandon climbs to his feet. “We’ll get out of your hair, let you get some sleep.”

“Right.” Kyle rises more slowly and there’s a look in his eyes that I’m not sure I like. I can’t place it, exactly, but I think I’ve offended him. I try to feel bad, but frankly I’m too exhausted to care. Not to mention pretty damn offended myself. He and Brandon have to know I’m running on fumes and it didn’t matter to them at all that they were making me uncomfortable by staying. Which means that my removing myself from the situation shouldn’t bother them either.

As they head to the door, they say a bunch of things that I’m too tired to listen to, so I just nod and try not to scream at them to get the hell out. In the end, after checking to make sure I’m really okay, Lily decides to go with them—for which I am eternally grateful. The last thing I want is to listen to her dissect her entire conversation with Brandon, sentence by sentence. Usually, her effusiveness about a new guy doesn’t bother me, but I haven’t slept in close to forty hours and I’m done. Nightmares or not, I’m getting some sleep.

I lock the door behind Lily and the guys, then stumble into my bedroom. Sitting neatly on my dresser are the binder, books, jar of herbs and cowboy boots that I shoved into the trash at Beanz hours ago. I stare blearily at them for a few seconds, trying to figure out how Salima managed it. But it’s too complicated and I’m too tired, so in the end I just turn away and fall face-first onto my bed. Spitting out a feather from my pillow is the last thing I remember before oblivion hits.