Enchanter's Echo (41 page)

Syphon mages were long forbidden, now relegated to mere legends.

But the death sentence still applied.

She sucked in a hard breath of the car’s rapidly warming air, held it, willed his energy away. Her head drummed with the fruitless effort. She wished she could stifle her energy signature, something an average mage could easily do.

Maybe Vincent wouldn’t sense her presence. After all, she had spent her entire life without anyone else noticing her unique vibes. Her energy signature registered as faint as a black hole, a fact she knew thanks to a lifetime of insults from her family. Today her faint vibes were her only hope at getting out of here unscathed. He couldn’t reveal her secret if he didn’t know she was here. Her meeting was with the senator, not with the famous Colonel Vincent Rallis.

She squinted through dark bangs for another glance at the clock. Eleven hours and five minutes. Her fingers itched to shred that darn pass into a thousand pieces. Her frustrated sigh seemed to blow against the second hand of the clock, speeding it along its circular path.

She peeked at the rearview mirror, half-expecting to see Vincent dashing down the stone stairs, an army of mages behind him with a big stake. The only person around was a gardener mage, spying from behind one of the fat trees lining the drive. Bronte craned around to look at him. Even from this distance, the tuning spirals tattooed on his temple appeared dark and thick. The permanent circles channeled the universe’s energy into his sixth sense, providing more mage power than he naturally possessed.

For his sake, she should get out of the car. It couldn’t be easy to keep the red and gold leaves of autumn neatly on their trees when they only wanted to tumble to the ground willy-nilly. The gardener wouldn’t dare let that happen in front of a guest. Autumn was too messy to tolerate for a powerful founding family. The unnatural trees gnawed at Bronte, their strangeness reminding her of the odd, new tune her songwriting partner had composed for her. Even now it grated against her ears. She’d changed Claude’s song onstage last night, improvised new notes in a disobedient but beautiful melody that sang from the strings of her violin. She’d get an angry earful the next time they spoke.

As she watched, the leaves began to shake on their branches like Claude’s angry fist. The gardener mage smiled at her beneath the fiery canopy’s shimmy. He was putting on a show. Though it was a distraction from Vincent’s invisible presence, she couldn’t afford to encourage any mage’s attention. She didn’t smile back. Instead she looked away, curled her fingers around the car key, and slipped it out of the Volvo’s ignition.

She reached for the straw cloche hat resting on the passenger seat and placed it just so for its short ride to the entrance of the house. Her thin cardigan was next. Her brooch acted as a pretty version of the required letter
N
for
Non
. A constant reminder of her status, it pulled heavily on the knitted fabric. She buttoned the pink sweater to support it. Respectably attired, she stepped out of the car.

The unusual September heat tried to force her back in. She would have preferred to comply, but her orders were not optional. She reached under her hat to check that her low chignon was still neat and then dropped her keys into her secondhand leather purse.

Coiffed and composed. That was her life’s formula, her self-defense.

She pulled the black violin case from the backseat. Subjecting it to the scorching temperature of a closed-up car was unthinkable. She never traveled without it. The instrument was an extension of herself. It would brave the Rallises with her.

The car door gave an impolite groan as she pushed it closed. With the violin in one hand and her purse tucked under her arm, she set a fast pace to the grand entrance, making up for lost time in the car. Her low heels scuffed against the pebbles of the drive.

She didn’t get far, halting as movement to her left drew her gaze. She looked up from under the brim of her hat. A solitary red leaf danced on invisible currents of heat. Bronte followed its pattern as it glided up and down, first by its tail end and then its tip. It drifted toward her. She couldn’t resist. Setting the violin case down on the stone, she held out her empty hand. The perfect red leaf landed there with a whispered grace.

She glanced back at the mage. He stood beside his fat tree trunk and stared, daring her to do something. She opened the discreet latch on her purse and tucked the rebel leaf carefully inside. It was as daring as she could get. The leaf was now a companion to the cursed note she was to give to the senator, her identification papers, and her car keys, which she moved into the zippered interior pocket to better protect her delicate refugee. Picking up her violin case, she marched toward her task in the stone house.

Had there been a moat, the steps could have been replaced with a drawbridge that angled up to the gray structure. The tall rectangular windows, over a dozen of them on the front, saved Rallis Hall from looking like a medieval fortress. The glass left a wavy impression, warped by generations of mage energy. There was a stark beauty to the manor’s straight lines. Rallis Hall hadn’t changed since she’d been here thirteen years ago for the Gathering ceremony.

The two dark wooden doors, a story and a half tall, were punctuated by knobs in their middles like matching belly buttons—unusual since mages didn’t need door knobs to open a door. In a mage home, energy was the universal key.

The twin doors opened before she’d climbed to the top of the stone steps. Bronte stumbled, expecting Vincent’s face. Instead, a gray-haired man in a dark suit and a gray silk cravat stood in the doorway. His hand fell to his side. He’d used the knobs instead of his mage power.

“Miss Casteel.” He nodded once, a formal gesture accompanied by a smile. “I wish you a warm welcome to Rallis Hall.”

She nodded back, though she wished to be most anywhere but here.

“Thank you.” The automatic words were part of the coiffed and composed façade. She couldn’t remember his name but did recall his face. He’d been the one to open the door then, too, as her parents rushed her out for daring to socialize with a mage. They’d been blind to what had just happened to the girl they’d all thought powerless. Their ignorance was a blessing from the goddess. From the moment Vincent brought her power to life, Bronte knew she had to hide it forever if she wanted to survive.

After that Gathering, her parents had banished her to the South. Another blessing. Though the Republic’s small population of Nons was scattered throughout the country, most lived in the three territories of the Southern Alliance. It was simple to hide her power among the Nons in her adopted city of Chattanooga in Locke Territory. From what she could tell, Vincent’s energy frequency was the only one she could influence. No one noticed she wasn’t really a Non.

The grand front doors clicked shut behind her. She jumped. Vincent’s vibes flowed into her, stronger now as if the doors held his power inside the manor, that much closer to her syphon.

The butler politely ignored her nervousness. “May I take your hat and your violin? I’ll see that it rests safely in our coat closet.”

She lifted the case, handing over her livelihood as if she weren’t really trapped with a dark fate lurking somewhere in the shadows of this house. She repeated her thanks, her voice thin from too little air. Another of the Rallis staff hustled over, his footsteps silenced by his mage power. The servant took her things from the butler.

“This way, please.” The butler held out his arm toward the double doors on the other side of the grand foyer and left her to follow him. She didn’t. Instead she kept her eyes on her violin until it was tucked in the massive closet. She needed to know its hiding spot in case she had to see herself out.

“The senator is waiting, miss.” The mild reprimand was nothing compared to her need to keep her violin safe.

Certain she knew its location, she paced to the butler, her heels clacking and echoing in the vast entryway. Her mother would be mortified. Manners dictated mages always silence their steps.

A Rallis sentry stood in front of the closed doors, his dark gray uniform embellished with a scarlet sash and the family’s crest. Like the butler, the stern sentry opened the office doors with his hands, a courtesy to her. Mage vibes bothered Nons and made them anxious and jittery.

The butler stepped into the senator’s sanctum. “Miss Bronte Casteel.” He announced her name slowly, a pause between each word, drawing out the final syllable, and then stood aside.

She passed him with three shaky steps into the dark entrance of the office. The doors latched shut. She clutched her purse to her chest. Its leaf, the only one to escape the doomed fate of the others, was a talisman of hope and freedom. Every nerve was alert to any sign of Vincent’s presence and his unstoppable vibes. She crept forward one foot at a time as if the floor might rot from beneath her, and ventured into the light shining through the tall windows at the end of the huge room. Two masculine silhouettes, black shadows against the bright light, waited motionless.

She couldn’t sense any vibes from those two. Relief flooded through her. Vincent was not among them. With the exception of Vincent’s frequency, Bronte was blind to all mage energy, more so than a Non. She set her shoulders and headed toward them.

Senator Rallis, Vincent’s grandfather, stood behind the desk and wore the Rallis medallion. The medallion linked the land, its energy and people to the goddess’s blessing. Whoever wore it controlled the territory and its mages and had a vote in the Senate. The medallion hung heavily against the senator’s barrel-sized chest and gleamed with a polished bronze stone in the center.

Vincent’s brother, the other person her mother had told her to expect, stood to the side of the desk. Bronte’s mother had reviewed all the names and standings of the entire Rallis family, but she hadn’t needed it. Bronte remembered everything about these people. Anything connected to Vincent was too indelible to forget.

“Miss Casteel.” Vincent’s brother, Lord Edmund Rallis, greeted her first. He reached out a hand for hers. She shook it quickly. She didn’t want to linger if he didn’t like touching Nons. Most mages didn’t.

“Lord Rallis, it’s an honor to meet you.” She repeated the gesture with the senator. His right pinkie finger was missing, a casualty from a famous battle at the Rushes where the Senate met. It was a dangerous place even for the most powerful mages. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Senator Rallis.”

The senator inclined his gray head. “We are always pleased to meet with a fair-minded ambassador from the Casteel family.”

Those were in short supply. In fact, she didn’t know one since she didn’t count herself a part of the family. She gave the senator a small smile, but couldn’t resist a glance behind her. Vincent lurked somewhere nearby. His energy was strong.

She turned back, determined to focus on the senator. “How do you know I’m fair-minded?” She regretted the lighthearted words the moment they reached her lips.

“I’ll tell you.” The older man leaned forward. “I can read your energy.”

She froze. If he could read the energy around her, it might very well be Vincent’s. She hardly registered to any mage’s sense.

“You’re the only Casteel who doesn’t have the energy of a donkey’s behind.” Senator Rallis’s voice took on a wry edge.

Her laugh escaped from shock. She hoped no one heard the desperation behind it.

“Please have a seat.” The senator gestured to a chair in front of his desk.

She moved on shaky legs to the plush wingback and darted another glance to the back of the room. Those perfect vibes originated from that direction. Nothing there but shadows, though she didn’t trust her eyes. The Rallis men took their respective seats as she smoothed her skirt over her lap with a silent lecture to stop looking.

“Just last week we had a visit from your brother,” Edmund said. “Fair-minded is not how I would describe him. Claimed he needed access to our land for some sort of research. He was lying.”

Bronte blinked. Her options clarified with his warning. Some mages could sense lies. Apparently, he was one of them. Lying wouldn’t help her get out of this.

“A visit from two Casteels in one week is extraordinary.” The senator’s voice carried through the entire room. Probably from practice at the Rushes, named for the various herbs scattered on the floor of the Senate to dampen the dangerous energy levels from so many powerful mages in such close proximity. “She won’t lie to us, Edmund. I can feel it.”

“There are whispers of riots and growing discontent within the Casteel boundaries. Are the rumors true?” Edmund asked, his handsome face intent on hers.

“I have heard no rumors.” She tried to keep her expression free from her shock. “I’m rather uninformed about the happenings within Casteel.” An honest answer.

Senator Rallis’s fingers came together in a thoughtful pyramid. “That’s a shame, Miss Casteel. Family is meant to stay close together and provide support for one another. That’s a lesson the Nons exemplify.”

Bronte cocked her head. “The Nons have to be diligent in sticking together, senator. There is safety in numbers. A large mass of living energy is harder for mages to manipulate than one single source. Or so I’m told.” She could have rolled her eyes at herself. What was she doing? Poking at the senator was not the way to ensure a safe escape. She bit her tongue to prevent anymore verbal prodding.

The senator’s half-smile was accompanied by a raised brow. “An enlightening point, Miss Casteel. Like the Nons, the Rallis family sticks together too.”

Bronte knew the Rallis senator usually voted for Nons’ rights, unlike the Casteels, who were famous for their anti-Non stance. The Casteels would prefer to round up all the Nons in the Republic and stick them in the South, much like they’d done to their daughter. Bronte’s family believed all Nons should be forced to work in the South’s numerous manufacturing plants. Their smokestacks towered over the region like industrial forests.

She swallowed against the knot of bitterness stuck in her throat. “Support of my family is what brings me here, sir. As you know, my grandfather recently passed on.”