The Problem with Promises (7 page)

A moment later, the young witch dropped her gaze and hid her loss by readjusting her collar with a quick jerk.

Natasha’s chest had risen during this skirmish—almost impossible when one stopped to consider how massive a feat of engineering that was. “You have some gall,” she said.

She’s going to blow,
I thought, taking a cautious step backward. Merry slid out of my lace cup, and started hauling arm over arm for a peekaboo. She likes to witness a good explosion here and there. Always had, always will.

And I didn’t even try to stop her—she had few enough perks in her life.

A few scratches as she made her summiting move, then the top curved portion of her pendant crested the vee of my blouse in time for her to witness the fat witch jab a stubby finger at Trowbridge.

“You want to think back, chum?” Blotches of red mottled Natasha’s cheeks. “When was the last time the Creemore pack asked for some assistance from my coven?” Her little digit trembled in rage. “Do you remember what happened ten years ago?”

As a question, that one was right up there with who killed Kennedy. Of course he knew, just as I did, what occurred that night. We’d both lost our families in one swift hour of violence and blood.

The real question was, what precisely had her coven to do with the events of that evening?

Evidently, Natasha thought we knew. Because she was clearly insensible to the way Trowbridge’s eyes had narrowed until they were two blue slits above sharp, sharp cheekbones. And utterly dismissive of the way Cordelia removed both earrings.

Natasha was having her moment.

“When your uncle asked us to summon a ward for this pond, I thought the request was being made on behalf of your father, the Alpha of Creemore. So of course, we did as required—your pack had been our biggest source of income.”

Oh crap. The
Sisters
had placed a ward over the pond that night? They’d been responsible? We’d always thought it had been my aunt Lou. And we’d asked them to come help us?

Someone shoot me. Or better yet, shoot them.

Cordelia pocketed her hoops.

“But that wasn’t the case, was it?” Natasha said with magnificent outrage. “Your father—the Alpha of Creemore—died as a result of our spell and your uncle used the protection of
our
ward to pass through the Fae’s gates unnoticed.” Her tone slipped into the death-and-doom register. “Do you know how much trouble answering the call of Creemore wolves brought unto me and my coven?”

Spitting with rage, she was. Air bubbles of spit collected by the corner of her mouth.

Her fury was a sickening visual contrast to Trowbridge’s sudden stillness. So, he hadn’t known either. Did his hands itch to throttle her like mine did?

“Good must be balanced with bad,” Natasha pronounced. “Your uncle connected us to deaths and destruction. For five years every member of my coven suffered. We had everything from cheating husbands to Revenue Canada coming after us for tax withholding. We lost our homes, our side businesses. Not only was our Karma screwed over but our livelihood went up in smoke. First your uncle Mannus threatened our lives, then he sent out word that we weren’t to be trusted. After that, no pack would come near us. It didn’t matter that for twenty-five years our magic had kept the wolves safe from humans’ eyes. All the cloaking spells, all the hide spells, all the wards we conjured to protect your private hunting grounds—forgotten. Suddenly we were too close to the dark side. All our contacts with the Weres—every single council we’d ever done work for—dried up overnight and the wolves started using another coven.”

She lifted her double chin. “And now, you come knocking on our door, again, after all these years. You’ve got the nerve to ask us to make another ward for this fairy pond. You have balls of steel, wolf!”

“Nastasha,” said Elizabeth in an undertone.

But the fat witch was busy giving us the evil eye.

Which was absolutely no match for the Trowbridge preflare, spinning-blue-sparks glare. “Then why’d you come?” he said, his voice too low, his body too tightly coiled.

Natasha said, “Some messages must be delivered in person.”

Trowbridge’s head reared back. Time for an intervention—no matter how much we both wanted to ass-kick them to the curb, we needed them. We could strangle them later. I touched his rigid arm, felt the stone-hard muscles beneath his warm skin. “Let me,” I said.

This type of woman, I well understood. My Fae aunt Lou had been prone to long, dark periods of deep sulking, followed by explosions of anger. When I’d been an easily spooked kid, those rages had scared the crap out of me.

Not anymore.

“Let’s be real blunt,” I said to her. For the first time in the last ten minutes, I felt on top of everything. I’d seen the view from this particular mountaintop before and knew how to navigate the way down. Easy peasy: ignore the bluster and carry on.

“You’re going to give us the ward. Because no one in their right mind would come here—in the dead of night, to the wolf’s den—and dare to piss off the Alpha of Creemore, unless in the end, she meant to do business.” I folded my arms. “Both you and I know that this is your coven’s last opportunity to get back in favor with the Weres. And in the end, it all comes down to money, right?”

See? I wasn’t above stealing Trowbridge’s words or logic.

“If you don’t put a ward around that pond, there won’t be ‘further opportunities’ with the Weres. This is your chance to win back wolf approval and go back to sending your kids to private school.” And then, just to sweeten it, I said, blandly, “The money will really start to roll in after this.”

Perhaps it was the bland that set me up. Or maybe it’s because I followed up with the slightly smug, “Let’s cut to chase. Tell us what you want.”

Natasha’s smile was cruel. “Cry for me, Fae. Give me a Tear and we’ll call it even.”

Whoosh. The air rushed out of my lungs.

“Think again,” said Trowbridge.

Natasha shook her head, sure of herself. “No. That’s what I want—a Fae Tear. About the size and shape of a tear-shaped diamond, but many times more valuable.” She smiled at me, the fat Persian cat thinking about moving itself for a spot of fun. “They say all you have to do is make a Fae cry and hold out your hand. Her tear will harden in your palm. Turn to a diamond before your very eyes.”

“That is a myth,” Trowbridge said, his tone as cold and harsh as driving sleet.

“No. It’s not,” she said. “And it’s what we should have been given for the last ward we put over this pond. But we were tricked, weren’t we? We didn’t know that Mannus had a Fae in the background.”

“I could kill you right now, right here, bitch,” said Trowbridge.

“But you won’t. The Alpha of Creemore doesn’t call on old friends to visit near midnight unless he’s desperate.”

“C’est vrai,”
said Elizabeth.

Natasha lifted her eyes to meet Trowbridge’s fury with a cool that belied her earlier heat. “One Tear for one ward.”

“That’s not on the table,” my lover said, his voice a low threat.

Revenge is sweet, isn’t it?

The tempting probability of it had swollen Natasha’s chest. She tipped back her head, and said, really slowly, “You better think about your options, Alpha. Because there is no other coven to turn to. The rest of them want to play it safe—keep it all goodness and light. And none of them are interested in dealing with your pack because they’ve seen what happened to us.” She issued him a smile laced with equal parts satisfaction and surety. “Your mate’s going to adjust the balance sheet. She’s going to pay the bill that your kin should have paid. She’s going to give me a piece of the Fae, crystallized into a diamond. It’s the only thing I’m interested in and the only thing our coven will bargain for.”

Then she turned to me and stared at my dry eyes.

Tell her you don’t have them.

A lie. One that I couldn’t carry off because I could see it in her eyes.
She knows.
How did she know I always carried them, safe in the small leather pouch, hanging from the end of the golden chain belt girthing my hips?

She knows.

About those perfect six stones birthed in acute pain. Five of them squeezed from my mother’s eyes, one of them from my own—brought forth as I lay on Cordelia’s bathroom floor, Trowbridge’s hip warm against mine, knowing that I was falling in love.

They were precious beyond words. Personal. Private. Oh Goddess, to have one of those corrupt women touching them. Owning it. Using it to absorb evil.

No, no, no.

Trowbridge reached for me, and pulled me close. Arms wrapped around me, one shoulder protectively hunched against the witches’ sight line so that I could rest my cheek against his chest in relative privacy.

He knows how I hate being watched. How does he know that?

We’ve spent so little time together.

His breath warmed my ear. “Forget it,” he whispered. “They’re just leveraging for more money.”

I shook my head. I truly did know this type of woman, having lived with one. The Natashas of the world don’t take a perceived grievance lightly. The cost to fix a wrong to a woman such as she would always outweigh the value of the original offense.

“We’ll call the portal without a ward,” he whispered into my ear.

My breath had nowhere to go. It came out of my lungs in a slow exhale, hit his shoulder, and then returned to warm my face. On it, I smelled sweet syrup and Trowbridge kisses. “The pack will know that we’ve gone. And they’ll be waiting for us when we come back. They’ll see my brother—they’ll know it’s all been a lie. I’ve seen them turn—”

“I’m an Alpha.”

“There’s too many of them to nail with your flare all at once, Trowbridge.” I swallowed against the knot swelling in my throat.

“I can find another coven.”

“Not in time,” I said miserably. I pushed away from the security of his hard chest. Slid my hand beneath my waistband, until my fingertips encountered the thin supple links of the chain.

The Fae inside me was angry. I could feel the whip of her annoyance, and worse, I could sense her dark interest in the magic these women promised.

Trowbridge smoothed my hair in a gesture filled with impotent hurting as I bent to examine the pouch. The leather was soft and worn, embellished with silver filigree. Gently I teased open the delicate strings. The stones seemed to wink at me from the bottom of the pouch. Six pale pink. One bright and clear.

Which Tear could I part with?

Trowbridge sucked his breath through his teeth as I pulled out the one I’d shed for him. It had hurt, knowing myself to be falling in love. A small agony as the tear had welled in my ducts.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and I knew he meant it, even if I wasn’t sure what he was saying sorry for.

I turned to Natasha and held out my closed fist.

She moved closer, until I could smell the sweat of her body and the rot of her soul. “You can’t stay while we set the ward,” she said. “Your magic will interfere with ours.”

I dropped it into her palm and watched with dull eyes as she folded her fingers over the bits of him and me, and then, because I couldn’t stay, not without birthing another frozen tear, I said, “I’m going inside.”

*   *   *

Though of course, I didn’t. Even though Trowbridge told me to lock the door until he was through with them, I was loath to go into the house, where Anu waited. So instead I sat down on the back porch’s bottom stair, and stared at them from a distance while I slowly pried up a long sliver of crumbling pine from one of the rotting stoop’s risers.

You’d think it wouldn’t take long to cast a ward.

You’d be wrong.

An hour passed—the owl roosting in the beech tree hooted three times; a mouse darted along the line of overgrowth that edged the woods; something small and unidentified burrowed under a layer of leaves; and my ass started to send “damp” and “chilled” progress reports to my nervous system.

And
still,
the witches were working on setting the wards. Evidently calling up enough magic to envelop the pond and surround the cliffs in a ward was a complicated business. The first step was to establish the area that Trowbridge wanted protected by the ward. Thus, he, Cordelia, and the fat one had done a survey along the edges of the cliff running along the ridge of his family’s property followed by a precarious duckwalk along the thin crumbling precipice that bordered the parameters of the cemetery—I’m thinking
that
was Trowbridge’s punishment for the witch’s general insolence—and then finally across my family’s land and down our path all the way to the small pebble-strewn beach.

Natasha had made a big deal of using her walking stick to sketch a line in the earth.

Show-off.

The skinny one—“Aleezahbet”—had chosen not to walk beside them, opting instead to parallel their progress around the property. Strangely enough, of the two witches, she looked more engaged with the whole see-me-cast-a-spell process. Her mouth was moving, and her gaze seemed distant.

As the foursome had slowly inched past my porch, I asked innocently, “What’s she doing?” Mostly because I wanted to poke Natasha with a bear stick. She would have been far happier if I’d truly gone inside the house.

The woman needed to learn to live with disappointment.

Natasha had said, “The leylines are a web beneath the soil. She’s searching for the strongest ones.”

Ah, yes. The infamous leylines.

A tad grittily, Natasha had elaborated. “As Elizabeth follows them, she becomes a satellite tower, beaming the coven’s power up through this plane on the earth. I, in turn, feed from her power. We are all connected.”

Hogwash.

Trowbridge had given her his own searing glance of disbelief. “I’ve got limited patience for this shit. This ward better be functioning—”

“It will be.”

“I want a demonstration of that before you leave this place.”

“You shall,” the older witch had said, looking straight into his blue eyes.

My mate’s nostrils had flared.