Grim Haven (Devilborn Book 1) (8 page)

But it had just sort of popped out.

It was worth it, though, to see their shocked and horrified faces. They didn’t expect me to stand up for myself. I’d taught them too well that I never would.

Jessica cupped her pregnant belly with one hand. “Verity, don’t tell me you’re still holding grudges from when we were kids?” She forced a laugh. “I assure you, we don’t have time for teenage silliness anymore.”

“No,” I said, matching her laugh. “I can see that.” I turned and left.

The next morning, Lance called me before I’d even dried my hair: John Pickwick had come.

I went up to the owner’s suite—manager’s suite, now that I’d assured the Boyles there would be no need for them to move—and tried not to think of the last time I was there. Before I knocked, I pressed my palm against the door and closed my eyes.

Red
.

Whatever waited for me in there, there was anger in it. Mine? Or someone else’s?

I didn’t get a good look at the apartment side as Lance stepped aside to let me in, but at a glance, it seemed to be decorated in a much more homey style than Miss Underwood had preferred. I imagined the walk-in closet had changed a great deal, at least.

The office was much the same, with a couple of bland, generic landscapes on the beige walls, and not much else to catch the eye. Lance gestured toward the conference table, where Agatha already sat beside a stout man with a comb-over.

Marjory Smith sat across from them. She gave me a clipped nod, but said nothing.

“You called her before you even called me?” I asked, aware it sounded petulant. I squared my shoulders and went for a more formal tone. “Frankly, I don’t see why any of the rest of you have the right to discuss Miss Underwood’s estate with her attorney. As far as I’ve been told, it concerns only me.”

Lance cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should start by introducing you to Mr. Pickwick, before we get on with the bickering?”

I shot him a glare, but I shook Mr. Pickwick’s hand as the latter rose in greeting.

“Miss Thane, nice to meet you at last,” Pickwick said. “Heard you had a bit of trouble back home.”

“A fire in my building,” I said with a nod, and hoped that was all he meant. I’d heard nothing from either the fire department or the police back in Lenox. Had they discovered Kestrel Wick’s body? Had they tied it to Cooper or me? Had they tied her to the fire? What about my neighbor?

It all seemed so distant now, like it had happened to somebody else. But the reminder actually gave me courage. Surely if I could handle all that, Marjory Smith wouldn’t be an insurmountable challenge.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” Mr. Pickwick waited until Lance and I sat down—Lance beside his wife, which left me to take the seat beside Marjory—before sitting himself. “As to your question,” Pickwick went on, “I’m a lawyer, but I’m not really here today in a legal capacity.”

“Then what capacity are you here in?” I asked. “Because I’m feeling a bit like I could use a lawyer.”

Mr. Pickwick chuckled. “More as a mediator, if you like. You’re right that Marjory and the Boyles don’t have a legal stake here, but they have a, shall we say, personal interest? And it would be nice to work out everyone’s concerns without things getting to the point of formal proceedings. It’s irregular, but this town has always done things a little bit differently, as I’m sure you would agree.”

That was for sure. I still had horrible nightmares about Miss Underwood coming for me every time I got a fever or the flu. I sighed and nodded. “All right then, Mr. Pickwick. What do you suggest?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have disturbed your life in New England if I wasn’t entirely confident that you are the rightful heir to Madeline Underwood’s estate.” He looked at Marjory. “But I wanted to lay it out for everyone, all at once, in hopes of getting this resolved today. I know we’d all like to move forward.”

“You have no definitive proof that Max is dead,” Marjory said. “Nor that Mark is, for that matter.”

“No, but I don’t need it,” said Mr. Pickwick. “Madeline’s will is quite clear. Even if you produced Max in the flesh right here and now, you’d have an uphill battle on your hands.”

“The Underwood fortune wasn’t Madeline’s to distribute as she saw fit!” Marjory said. “It belonged to their parents! And when they died, it should have passed to all of the children equally. You can’t simply ignore—”

“—a case you would be free to make in court,” Mr. Pickwick interrupted. “Or at least, Max or Mark would be free to do so, if they were alive. But then, by all accounts, Max was incompetent. Oh, you would probably be able to get some provisions made for him, but—”

“Listen to you,” I interrupted, staring at Marjory. “The other day you told me you were doing this because taking care of Max is what Madeline would have wanted. Now you’re saying what she wanted is irrelevant. So what exactly are you after?”

Was it the hotel? Did she want to set up Max as some kind of figurehead, under her control? But Marjory had her own job, her own life. What would she want with the Mount Phearson?

Marjory glared down her long nose at me. Her dead eyes had always given me chills as a child. But I was a grown woman now, and I could at least hide how horrifying I found her. I didn’t break eye contact.

“As I’ve already told you,” she said, “I’m only thinking of Max. Perhaps you were right the other day. Perhaps I didn’t do enough for him… before. But someone should be thinking of him now.”

“Marjory,” Mr. Pickwick said. “Lance and Agatha here are making a lot of changes to the hotel. Changes they hope will make a brighter future for all of Bristol. They’d like to continue to do that with confidence, but they won’t be able to in the middle of some long, drawn-out battle for the Phearson. It would be better for everyone—the entire community—if you would just let this go.”

So that’s it. Of course.

It came down to control. Not just for Marjory, but for all of them. Bristol was a getaway town. It relied on the Mount Phearson. Whoever controlled the hotel controlled, to a large degree, the entire town by extension.

Marjory wanted to think of Bristol as hers, and her coven’s, if not my father’s anymore. She certainly would never want to think of it as mine.

As for the Boyles, all Lance wanted was stability under which to grow the business. And if things were stable in the hands of a twenty-four-year-old, who would no doubt be easier to handle, and have fewer pesky opinions of her own, than Marjory Smith, so much the better. That was good to know. People who were motivated by the bottom line were at least easy to understand.

And maybe Marjory was motivated by the bottom line, too. Controlling Max would also mean controlling a great deal of money. I hadn’t gotten into exact figures with Pickwick yet, but as I understood it, the Underwood fortune was in the millions. I hadn’t had much time to think about that part of it yet, but now that I did, I felt a little faint. No wonder everyone was squabbling over it.

Marjory stood up. “I can see I was foolish to come here,” she said with a disgusted look at Mr. Pickwick. “You didn’t want to discuss this, or do what’s right. You only wanted to bully me into
letting this go
.” She looked at me. “But I won’t be letting it go, dear.”

And on that note, the meeting was pretty much over. I felt Marjory’s ill will, as I walked alone back to my room. Felt it like a predator stalking me.

A new dark thing, coming for me.

My supplies wouldn’t be there until the next day, but I didn’t think I could afford to wait. I sat at my desk and pricked my finger with a nail file, until I had enough pure blood to write a hasty protection spell.

Plain blood was how it had begun, after all. As a child, I escaped into books so often that protecting myself with stories became second nature. I started out writing my story-spells in normal pen, but soon discovered that blood was much more powerful. It was only later, when I learned more about the properties of herbs, minerals, and metals, that I started mixing that blood with various powders and essential oils to produce my ink.

I refined my recipe over the years, and the spells written in that ink served me awfully well. But for now, basic blood would have to do.

I went to bed that night fairly confident that I could fend off whatever Marjory was sending after me, but also wondering whether she wasn’t a little bit right. Of course I didn’t trust her, or believe for a second that she felt protective of Max. But shouldn’t
I
feel protective of him?

Didn’t I owe him something, for not being brave enough as a kid to keep trying to help him? And now I was taking his birthright. What if he really was still alive?

It had been a long time since I’d written a spell for anything other than protection, but I resolved that I’d use part of my first batch of ink to try to find him, somehow, or at least discover his fate.

Feeling a little better, I went to sleep.

And then feeling a lot worse, I woke up.

It was just after midnight. I’d been dreaming of Madeline Underwood. And I was burning with fever.

Marjory Smith had come for me, as surely as if she’d entered my room. Her dark will ran through me, making me hotter, weaker. My chest ached. My bones, too.

But Miss Smith, competent witch though she might be, was no Miss Underwood. And I wasn’t quite such a novice anymore.

I didn’t bother with paper. I cut open both index fingers, and wrote directly on my forehead, my cheeks, my chest.

Unharmed. Unharmed. Unharmed.

A one-word story that I put every ounce of power I had behind. I thought of what Cooper had told me, about his kind directing their vitality inward to keep themselves healthy and strong. True, they were built that way, and I wasn’t. But will was will, and power was power. If they could do it, why not me? Maybe just this once?

I didn’t have a thermometer, but I didn’t need one to tell me my temperature was getting dangerously high. If it went on much longer, I’d have to give up and call 911.

Unharmed. Unharmed. Unharmed.

I wrote it over and over, always in threes. I focused inward, on the heat building inside me, and willed it to cool.

My fever rose higher. I started to shake.

And then I started to sweat. The fever broke.

An hour later, after a nice long drink and a cool bath to wash off the blood, I was tucking myself back into bed.

“Take that, Marjory Smith,” I whispered. “Round one goes to me.”

Max got in touch with Verity in the only way he could.

Which was how? As a spirit from beyond the grave, or with a simple phone call? I decided to let the spell decide. It was tricky enough as it was, writing a story about someone else. Mine was usually the only name mentioned in my spells. Working your will on another human to any degree beyond self-defense is a difficult task, not to mention ethically questionable. But maybe Max, if he was influenced by the spell at all, would understand that my heart was in the right place.

It was the first thing I wrote when I finally made some ink, even before the protection spells I scattered around my newly-renovated suite.

By a happy coincidence, construction on one of the new sections of the third floor finished only a few days after I arrived in Bristol, and they were able to move me. So now I had a kitchenette, at least, and a small bit of office space. I didn’t think Lance was very happy about taking one of the new luxury suites off the market for paying guests, but apart from giving me his own, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Marjory had stayed away since my successful defense against her spell. Regrouping, I supposed, now that she’d taken the measure of me. And no doubt making plans for something even nastier. So I had that to look forward to.

But I was plenty busy without her. After our meeting shed some light on Lance’s motivations, I got more involved in daily operations than I might have otherwise. I got reports on all his plans and progress, mostly approving them, but occasionally telling him to change something, just to prove I could. That might sound spiteful, but I already had two strikes against me when it came to establishing authority: I was young, and he’d been there first. If I didn’t make it clear that I was the boss right away, I never would.

I also spent a lot of time with Mr. Pickwick, going over the particulars of the estate. I was right about the money; I would be a very wealthy woman, once everything was settled.

As the days stretched on, it seemed there would be no fallout—legally, anyway—from everything that had happened in Lenox. I got word that the cause of the fire had been established: bad wiring gone wrong. Nobody ever said anything about a body in the dumpster around the corner, at least not to me.

It all should have given me a great sense of freedom. Kestrel and the fire were behind me. I had no family, no roots. And I would soon be richer than I could really fully grasp. I’d be able to sell the hotel if I wanted to, go anywhere, do anything or nothing at all.

But I didn’t forget that the world outside Bristol wasn’t safe for me anymore. Nor, as I learned not quite two weeks after I got back, was the world
inside
Bristol.

I hadn’t ventured outside the hotel much, especially once I had the means to make my own meals. I wanted to minimize the risk of running into Marjory, or any of her coven. Or anyone else I knew, come to mention it.

But one morning I decided to go back to The Witch’s Brew for a cup of tea and an almond croissant. I don’t know whether that decision was driven by overconfidence or just optimism, but either way, I should have known it would get me into trouble.

It was mid-morning on a Thursday, so the shop wasn’t all that busy. There was only one person in line at the counter. But as I took my place behind him, I saw that he was possibly the very worst person I could run into. And I included Miss Smith in that assessment.

I looked at the floor and said a silent prayer that he wouldn’t look around and see me. Or recognize me if he did.

Of course he turned around. Of course he saw me. And of course he said, in the friendliest, sweetest voice imaginable, “Verity Thane! I heard you were back in town.”

You couldn’t let that voice fool you. That was one lesson I’d never forget.

“Heard it from your aunt, I assume?” I asked, forcing myself to meet his eyes.

Asher Glass was Marjory Smith’s nephew. And he had the family talent for magic.

He had used that power, among others, to destroy me back in the tenth grade. On a glorious October day, during one of the best years for foliage we ever had.

I came into school feeling exhilarated by the walk, and found a note from Asher taped to my locker. It said he had something he wanted to ask me. It hinted that the something had to do with the homecoming dance.

You might well wonder how I could be such a fool. It wasn’t like I’d never seen a teenage movie. But Asher and I had been partners on a poetry project that fall, and I guess I thought we’d connected over Keats and Donne. I was a hardheaded girl, relentless in my optimism; despite my mother’s death, my discovery of Max, the abuse from Miss Underwood and the town in general, I still hadn’t learned the dangers of harboring some hope for myself. But I was about to.

I met him in the back hallway, before the bell rang that morning. And he did ask me to the dance. I said I’d love to go, although inside, I was already starting to panic about what I would wear.

As we said goodbye, Asher leaned in, and kissed me on the lips. I let him. Of course I did. I even kissed him back.

That kiss sealed a spell he’d been working. I was rooted to the floor, powerless to move at all, except for breathing. Asher, still smiling tenderly, pulled my skirt down around my ankles and walked away.

I stood there for almost an hour, exposing my cheap cotton underpants, with their stretched-out elastic and a hole in one butt cheek, to everyone who walked by. And as you might expect, there were plenty who walked by; Asher and his friends made sure of that.

There were also teachers drawn by the commotion. Naturally, they insisted I pull up my skirt and go to the principal’s office immediately. But when I didn’t—couldn’t—oblige, they had to be concerned about getting physical with a student, especially one who was partially undressed. I had to wait for one who practiced magic herself, and understood what was going on, to come and pull me away.

Once she did, the spell was broken. But the damage was done.

Asher Glass still had that face, that smile that had once beguiled and now only repulsed me.

“Actually, I heard it from my wife,” he said in answer to my question. “She said you threatened her. You’ll want to watch that.”

Of course. Jessica. They’d dated in high school. Of course she would be Jessica Glass now, and that baby in her belly Asher’s. Now there was the true spawn of the devil.

“I was just joking around,” I said. “I remember how you guys love a good joke.”

Asher smiled. “Good. Then I’m sure you also remember how—”

“Your coffee, Ash.” Wendy’s husband Caleb set a cup down on the counter, maybe a little harder than necessary. A paper to-go cup, thank goodness. Then he turned his pleasant face to me. “You’re Verity, right?”

“Right.”

“Welcome back to town. How’re things going at the hotel?”

“Very well, thank you,” I said, ignoring Asher’s smirk. “I’m still settling in, but Lance is awfully good at what he does.”

“That he is,” Caleb agreed. “What can I get you?”

I was determined not to let the encounter with Asher throw me off my mission. “An almond croissant please. And a cup of oolong.”

“Eating in or out?” Caleb asked.

“That depends. Is Wendy around?”

“Should be, any minute.”

“In, then.”

I turned back to Asher, who was still hovering by the counter, and raised an eyebrow. “Was there something else? Don’t let me keep you from… whatever it is you do now.”

He leaned forward, just a little, just enough to get into my personal space. His expression was so charming that for a second I thought he was going to flirt with me. But surely he didn’t think I’d fall for that twice.

He didn’t. Instead he said, in a steely voice that belied his smile, “I’m a police officer, as a matter of fact. So you’ll want to watch yourself, and your little jokes. I’m not one to show mercy, as you probably remember.”

I did my best to look bored as he turned away.

“People really don’t change,” Caleb said with a sigh. “Asher Glass was always a little shit, and he still is. But his father’s a sergeant, so.” He shrugged, then nodded toward the door. “Here’s Wendy now.”

“Verity!” Wendy smiled at me, then glanced at Caleb. “She looks upset, did you oversteep her tea?”

“I haven’t even made her tea yet.” Caleb leaned across the counter to kiss his wife, then turned away to get my order ready.

“So what happened to you?” asked Wendy.

“No big deal. Asher Glass—”

“Say no more,” she interrupted. “He puts that look on my face, too.”

I explained that I’d come in in hopes of having that chat she’d suggested. A few minutes later she had me settled with my tea and croissant—on the house—in the back office, where we could talk privately.

The room was more like a library in an old mansion than an office, with its plush chairs and expensive rug. I cautioned myself not to get too cozy. I instinctively liked Wendy, but I didn’t know what she was about, or why she’d taken an interest in me. And my encounter with Asher had been a sharp reminder that trust could be a mistake.

“So, things are going okay at the hotel?” she asked.

“Not too bad.” I considered her. She owned one of the social hubs of Bristol. If there were any rumors about Max Underwood, she might know them. “Marjory Smith’s been protesting my inheritance though. She says Max Underwood is alive.”

Whether deliberately or by coincidence, Wendy chose that moment to take a sip of her coffee, so I couldn’t see her reaction. Her voice was neutral as she said, “Does she, now?”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Not really. Look, I just wanted to talk to you about your father.”

I choked on my bite of croissant.

Wendy smiled in the infectious way she had and said, “Sorry. It’s probably one of those things people don’t usually bring up in polite conversation.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I take it you’re a believer, then.”

She dismissed that with a wave of her shortbread. “Witchcraft runs in my family as far back as I can trace it.” She didn’t need to say more; all of the witches in Bristol believed in the devil. It was sort of like you were all in with the supernatural, or all out.

“I wanted to know if you came back because of him,” she went on. “I assume he was the one who instructed Madeline to take care of you. But if you want the Mount Phearson because you think you’ll be able to amass some kind of power here, under his protection—”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I’d come to Bristol for protection, that much was true. But I would never look to my father for it. “It’s not like that. And I heard he left town, anyway.”

“So he did,” Wendy agreed.

“That must have been an adjustment for people.”

“Not as much as I was afraid it would be. We’re doing okay on our own. I guess two hundred years was enough of a head start.”

“Are you talking about the local economy, or local magic?”

“Both, I guess. But I’m afraid there’s more to it than his just leaving town. The sanctuary was broken deliberately, by someone who was hunting him.” Wendy hesitated, then shrugged. “Look, I’m no good at mincing words, so I’m just going to lay it out.”

“Please do.”

“Your father was not a good guy. He was a psychotic killer, actually, as it turns out.” She sat back in her seat and gave me an appraising stare, I guessed waiting to see how I would react.

What did she expect? That I would be shocked? Defend him? You didn’t grow up with a nickname like
Devilborn
and live under any illusion that you came from virtuous stock.

Besides, everyone knew what my father was like. Sure, he took care of the town, but he terrorized it, too. Tourists disappeared, young women claimed to be ravished. Nobody kept dogs or cats, because legend had it they would drop dead if they crossed his path.

All I said to Wendy was, “I notice you’re talking about him in the past tense.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Observant of you. The fact is… well, sorry you’re hearing this from a stranger, but he’s dead.”

I took a sip of my tea, then a bite of my croissant.

“You okay?” Wendy asked.

I nodded. “I’m just waiting.”