Baehrly Alive (16 page)

There were no knick-knacks in here either, nothing extra or unnecessary. Suits were hung up in the closet, his running and casual clothes were in the dresser.

I crossed to the hamper and pulled out a shirt. He had worn it, the day before we left on that final, useless trip. I pressed it to my nose.

It still smelled like him.

I awoke with a dark figure standing over me. I had known he would be there, somehow. Maybe because he had haunted my dreams.

I looked up from where I had buried myself in Donovan’s bed, still clinging onto his shirt. “Have you come to take me now?”

“No.” Death looked down at me. I almost wished I could see his face—Death had to have a face after all, didn’t he? I wished I could understand why he was haunting me like this.

I was too tired, too numb, and heartbroken to care.

“Goldie?”

Death jerked at the sound and vanished.

Just as he had done the night before Donovan had died.

Kodi came into the room, his face openly wearing his concern.

“What are you doing here?” I asked tiredly, neatly folding Donovan’s shirt and placing it on his pillow. It was hardly the shrine he deserved, but it was all I had. I let my hand linger there, imagining that my skin could drink in his scent and leave something there of him—something lasting that I could hold onto.

“The door was open,” Kodi said, watching me openly. “It’s time to get ready to go—we can’t be late for the meeting with the Council of Magic. I know you wanted to do this on your own, but—well, I thought I’d come and offer you some moral support.”

I nodded tiredly, trying to muster the energy I needed for the day ahead of me.

“Goldie,” Kodi said gently. “I’m so sorry. I know you loved him.”

“Love him,” I correctly softly.

Chapter Twelve

I burst back into the house and went straight up to my brother’s room, where I found Gwyn reading out loud to him.

“How did it go?” she asked. “You’re home much sooner than I was expecting.”

“That,” I spat, “is because they didn’t listen. They didn’t listen to one word of the evidence—they didn’t even wait to listen to what it was we were petitioning for.”

Kodi came into the room after me, nodding his head. “It’s pretty obvious that they never had any intention to listen to what Goldie had to say. She basically walked in front of a firing squad.”

I snorted—it was almost funny, the way we had been scathingly and unforgivingly scourged by the Council of Magic. We’d been treated as if we were criminals.

Well, in their eyes we were.

I didn’t think Nat would ever recover from the experience. He’d been as shocked as I was to find himself suddenly offered up as public enemy number one.

Actually, he was probably public enemy number two.

I made the top of the Council’s shit list all on my own.

Gwyn’s eyes widened. “What happened?”

I shook my head. “I still can’t believe it. We walked in there with all that research—with a plan—with a solution to offer. I actually thought that we had a chance—that they would listen and see the value of what we were doing. This is why I spent all those years in law school—I believed in the system.”

Gwyn’s eyebrows jerked upwards at my use of the past tense.

“Instead,” I told her bitterly, “we walked into a political ambush.” I closed my eyes, trying to calm the absolute rage that flowed through me. “Our petition—of which they heard not one word, by the way—was unequivocally denied. We were dressed down in front of the entire Council and warned that no contact with Faerie by anyone, even someone with such an illustrious parentage as mine,” I ground my teeth in frustration, “will be tolerated. Any contact at all will immediately be considered a sign of defection and be declared to be an act of treason and will be punished accordingly.”

“It wasn’t even the Eastern Council of Magic that they faced,” Kodi added, still standing in the doorway. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They faced the entire International Council of Magic today.”

I shook my head, still trying to understand how we had been so broadsided by all of this. “It was like having to go to the Supreme Court over… a speeding violation—for going two miles over the speed limit.” I curled my hands into fists. “They knew what we were coming to speak to them about—they knew and they used us as an example to anyone, anyone at all that might suggest that things could be done differently.”

Kodi nodded reluctantly. “I hate to agree with Goldie on this, but it’s true. This was all about the Council of Magic having their own agenda. They never intended to listen to the data.”

“No,” I growled. “They already made their minds up long ago. They don’t care who dies, who suffers—all they care about it making sure that no one interacts with Faerie at all.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the pointed and wild accusations the Council had made against my sister, Cindy. They had acted as if she were the worst kind of insurgent instead of just a small-time baker—and that I was skirting treason just for being related to her.

They had implied that they were watching my family for any false move.

I felt sickened at the thought—worse than sickened—I felt utterly betrayed. I had spent my life dedicated to serving the Council of Magic. I had fought for them and nearly died for them.

And this was the way they rewarded me for my loyalty.

They had treated me as if I were a criminal—worse, as if I were some kind of terrorist and anarchist, bent on destroying the Magical Community as a whole.

And they had done that in front of the whole world.

The press wasn’t allowed access to the proceedings of the Council of Magic, but for some reason, today they had been invited to witness the slaughter of our characters.

The way they had twisted, manipulated, and downright lied about me made me shake with fury.

Suddenly I was a murderer, a psychotic killer. The Council had used the death of Paige Turner to destroy my character—telling the Magical Community that I had murdered an Ordinary in cold blood—that I was on some kind of vendetta, working in cahoots with a Faerie Mafia.

I couldn’t even make this stuff up.

“One things for sure,” I muttered as I looked down at the still, pale form of my baby brother. “I’ll never be able to hold my head up in public society ever again.”

I tried to block everything out as Kodi explained what I had just been through in more detail. I was just shocked that we had gotten out of there without some kind of violence being done to us—either legally or illegally.

I had a huge target on my back—I’d had one for a while. But at least now, I knew it.

I wondered if my house had been bugged. The Council of Magic had more than enough opportunities to do it during the clean-up and renovation of the house.

I wondered if I could even trust Kodi anymore. He was the perfect plant, if they wanted one—someone I knew and trusted—someone I had been in a long relationship with.

I closed my fingers around Thomas’s hands. I was starting to get paranoid. So far, I had only had the one incident with the Council of Magic. There was no real reason to suspect that they were out to get me.

I really wanted to believe that.

“At least I left all of you out of the process,” I said, not even looking up from my brother. “The Council left all of you alone. I’m not sure how long that will hold true, though.”

Kodi reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “We’re in this together, Goldie,” he said. “We’ll fight this. We’ll protest defamation of character.”

“To who?” I asked dully. “We just spoke to the highest authorities in the Magical world. We can’t go over their heads—they are the heads.”

Kodi shook his head. “This is wrong. There has to be something we can do.”

I bit my lip. “There’s something you can do,” I told him. “You need to get out of here—now, before they start in on you. It’s bad enough that they’re dragging me down—they even implied that I… that I killed Donovan.” I gasped as the pain of those words hit me again. “They will stop at nothing, Kodi. They’ll destroy you, too, if it looks like you are even sympathetic to me. You can’t throw your entire career and life away on me.”

He stared at me. I could see the impact of my words hit him, the moment he realized that I was right—that just being in the same house as me could ruin his life.

“No,” he said. “We can fight this. Together. We’ll show the Magical Community who you really are—all the good you have done. We’ll counteract it all. We’ll show them that you aren’t a threat.”

“Aren’t I?” I asked quietly. “Kodi, I’m already more than a third vampire. Every day I draw closer and closer to that line. Don’t you think the Council of Magic knows this? The only reason that they feel free to destroy my character so entirely is because… well, they know I’m already dying.”

Kodi flinched. “No,” he said stubbornly. “We can and we will fight this. We can save your character.”

“Or,” I said quietly. “I can save my brother.”

They were waiting for me—the Ouroboros. They, like the rest of the Magical world, had seen the way the Council of Magic had gleefully massacred my character—how they had never even given me a chance to speak.

I had expected that.

What I hadn’t expected was for them to buy into the shit the Council was passing off for truth these days.

Of course, Hypatia spoke up for me, but she was only one voice among many.

“How do we know that we can trust you?” One voice, anonymous in the shadows, asked. “How do we know that you won’t just turn on us as you did your partner and that Ordinary girl?”

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. I didn’t have time to spend defending myself repeatedly—denying all the accusations the Council had made against me. “I know I can’t make any of you trust me, but none of you would be here if you didn’t have some issues with the Council of Magic. I’m not going to keep wasting my breath protesting how I was treated—I don’t have time. My little brother is dying. Every day he gets a little worse and now the healers don’t even want to come and help keep his Magic levels up because they, like you, are buying into everything the Council of Magic has accused me of. So, what do I do? I need your help to save my family—presumably; you can use my help, too. What do I have to do to earn your trust to the degree that we can work together?”

They left me alone while they discussed it. I fought the urge to hit the wall with my head a few hundred times. I could not believe that any of this was happening to me. I had always trusted the Council of Magic. How many times had I told clients that the system worked—that the Council of Magic was just and fair?

Now, I wondered who else had been destroyed by stepping a foot out of line with the Council’s agendas.

Every time I thought life couldn’t get any worse, it did.

I had done everything right. I had sought the proper channels. I had done my research. I could have tried to do it all on my own, but no, I had gone to the Council of Magic.

Because that’s what you were supposed to do when you worked with the good guys.

But the Council had let me down.

Worse, it was letting down all of those Magical creatures that were dying of the same malady that was killing my brother and stepmother.

Ignoring this problem wasn’t going to make it go away. Why couldn’t they understand that?

What did any of us have to gain from any of this? The threat was real—and I knew that the Council of Magic was aware of that fact.

So why were they turning their backs on the people they were sworn to protect?

None of it made sense.

I had done the right thing. I had gone to the good guys.

And they had burned me at the stake.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just turn my back on my brother. I couldn’t just ignore the fact that we were facing a Magical extinction unless something changed.

The good guys had let me down. I no longer had any options.

Either the Resistance was going to back me up on this, or I was going to have to figure out a way to do it on my own.

Because I was done watching the people I loved die. I was done being a victim. I was done risking my life, serving people who thought that everything I had done was expendable—that I could just be thrown away like refuse.

Good guys. Bad guys. I couldn’t see the difference anymore.

And, even if I could, I didn’t care.

I was going to save my family.

Even if it killed me.

Even if the next generation grew up to revile me.

Or I was forgotten completely.

Because, unless someone did something, everyone was going to die.

Hypatia came back to get me.

I stood in the middle of the leaders of the Resistance, and was uneasy. It reminded me of standing in front of the Council again. I lifted my chin, determined not to let them cow me. I was stronger than that.

“So, what have you decided?” I demanded. “Can you trust me?”