Phantom Eyes (Witch Eyes) (22 page)

He shook his head, like it was that easy to dispel dark thoughts. “I thought my mother, or Lucien—I thought someone had taken you! My mother was
offended,
like it was so unthinkable, when I accused her of doing something to you. Like she’s suddenly Mother of the Year or something.” And then a moment later, a soft admission, “I knew you’d come back.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” I told him. “Still a lot to do, if you’re up to it.”

“What happened to you?”

I shook my head. “It’s not important right now.”’ I slipped inside his arms, felt his warmth and the beat of his heart against his chest. Trey wrapped his arms around me with a sigh.

“What’s going to happen?” he asked, sounding resigned, like our lives would always be like this. Maybe this
was
what my life would always look like.

“Jason and Catherine are meeting me. Or at least they will be in,” I grabbed his arm and twisted it so I could read his watch, “eight minutes.”

Trey got a weird look on his face, and then carefully reached for my sunglasses. When I didn’t resist, he slid them off my face. “Your eyes are blue,” he said, but it sounded almost like a question.

“It’s probably just a trick of the light,” I said. My eyes were never
just
blue.

“No, they
are,
” Trey insisted. He walked me over to one of the cars parked on the street. My eyes were glowing, but now they were the same sapphire blue that I’d seen in the lighthouse. Before Grace had stolen my powers, my eyes had always been a kaleidoscope, a constantly changing barrage of colors. Now, though, they’d seemed to settle on just one. I looked at myself in the window, thinking it over. I even tried a few different angles, before I concentrated and the color faded. My eyes were still blue, but not the phosphorescent kind. Just normal blue.

I looked at his reflection in the window. “Did you bring it?”

He patted down the breast pocket of his jacket. “You asked so nicely.”

I was pretty sure I hadn’t asked him at all. The text Jade had sent was basically HE’S OKAY, MEET IN SQUARE. BRING CONTRACT.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

I looked towards the west, almost as though I could see Grace’s lighthouse on the skyline. I could feel it in the back of my head, a throbbing presence just waiting for me to return.

“Come on,” I said, ignoring the butterflies in my stomach. “Time for a party.”

twenty-nine

Up until this point, all my experiences at Fallon Law Offices had taken place in Lucien’s office. But there was a conference room on the far side of the floor that was much more appropriate for tonight’s agenda, and it had a fantastic view of the harbor.

Working together, Trey and I cleared the room of all but four chairs, one at each of the cardinal points of the giant rectangular conference table. I could have conjured everything out of the room—depositing it in another room or even another floor if I’d wanted, but I didn’t want to use any magic just yet. I didn’t want Catherine or Jason to get gun-shy.

Jason arrived first, which was no surprise on both parts. Jason was obsessively early for everything, and Catherine preferred to make an entrance. They both stalked into the conference room like they were the most important people in the town. Again, not a surprise.

Trey and I waited in Lucien’s office with the lights out, while Jason and Catherine both headed for the conference room where the lights were blazing. I left Trey to wait, and took a deep breath as I crossed the floor and headed in to start the showdown.

The spotlights at the corners of the harbor gave it a soft glow. All of the boats had been pulled from the water by now, stored for the winter just a few hundred yards from the water. As I approached, my feet barely making any sound, Catherine and Jason circled each other, wearing identical masks of disgust and loathing.

“I hope you don’t think this is funny,” Catherine said, seething. “It’s one thing to fill my son’s head with sorts of propaganda, but this is unacceptable.”

“She didn’t kill me, Jason,” I said, strolling into the room like I owned it. “She didn’t have anything to do with my disappearance, either. I wasn’t kidnapped. I was healing.”

Catherine shot him a look of triumph, as if anyone cared that my arrival vindicated her from suspicion. Other than that, though, she kept her surprise at my arrival hidden. Like she’d expected it all along.

Jason was half out of his chair before he caught himself, and his forehead screwed up in confusion. “
Healing
? What does that mean?”

I relaxed the illusion over my eyes, let the color shine forth again. “Healing,” I repeated, this time with more meaning.

Catherine started gathering her power, a cascade of diamonds an
d
silver energy that swirled around her to my eyes. But the benefit to having a demon’s power tucked away inside of me was that it gave me a portion of his power
. And there was no power greater than Lucien’s insight into the future. I might not have been able to sift through the threads of what could be as fast as he could, but I also knew what to look for.

My magic swarmed through hers, tearing spells apart faster than she could try and focus them. I saw every spell before she even had the chance to think it up. Each time, the tearing was a static shock to her system, throwing her a little more off guard. It was a hard balance, keeping one hand on my magic and the other on the demon power coursing through me. Too much power. Too volatile. This was dangerous.

But we want Catherine contained, don’t we?

It was getting to be too much. The winter voices were more numerous now, getting stronger in my head. I could feel my control shaking, like muscles that have been asked to do too much.

“Enough,” I snapped, severing the latest spell and, taking another page out of Lucien’s book, creating a binding circle all around her. Unlike Lucien, though, I didn’t need a witch to back me up. I slammed enough energy around her to keep her contained, a complicated pattern of sigils springing to light beneath her, something that was pulled from the deep recesses of my power. But whether it was Grace’s memory, or Lucien’s design, I didn’t know.

The moment the spell went up, I sagged a little. Jason was there in an instant, his arm on the small of my back. Not holding me up, but just … there. Catherine looked furious, but she glided back down into her seat with all the dignity of a queen. She didn’t act like someone who was trapped in a three-foot-wide circle.

“What’s going on?” Jason asked, lowering his voice so it wouldn’t carry much past the two of us.

I shook my head and gestured for him to take his seat again. There was sweat on my forehead, but this had to be done. I didn’t have a choice.

“Do either of you even know why there’s a feud in Belle Dam?” I looked between the two of them: condescending Catherine who was too above it all to answer, and confused Jason, who had no idea where the conversation was heading. I went ahead and answered for them. “There’s a feud because someone told you there was. Just like they told your parents, and their parents. But how many people do you think actually knew
why
there was a feud?”

“Oh, please tell me there’s a point to all this,” Catherine remarked, her eyes tilted toward the ceiling.

“Part of it’s so you’d be manageable. Quiet. You wouldn’t ask questions.” I circled the table. “Never wondering why Jason was so convinced you killed his wife,” and as I circled Jason, adding, “or why Lucien was so eager to take your son away.”

“The feud makes both of you stupid. It makes
everyone
stupid. How many people do you think know that witches and demons walk the streets of Belle Dam? How many people may not know
that,
but they know that if you want something that seems impossible, you do Jason Thorpe a favor and hope he’ll do one for you. Or that Catherine Lansing has a way of finding out secrets that
no one
knows. Everyone in this town buys into the delusion that it’s just a normal town, but it’s not. Everyone, including the two of you, buries their heads in the sand.”

I dropped a manila folder filled with papers onto the desk. “That changes tonight.”

I let the silence build, waiting for the moment one of them cracked. I knew it would be Catherine. Jason had a mountain of patience. He’d rather wait there a thousand years than allowing someone else the pleasure of seeing him crumble.

“What is that?” she demanded.

I faked surprise. “That?
That
is the contract that Lucien talked your son into signing. He gets all the magical vitamins he needs to cause trouble, and Lucien gets to dismantle his life in exchange. Sounds fair, right?”

Catherine’s face went white. It actually wasn’t even fair to call it just white. It was more like she went from living to corpse in a microsecond. Since the folder was too far out of her reach, I did her a solid and slid a copy towards her end of the table. Then I did the same for Jason.

The contract was longer than the one I’d signed with Matthias, and it wasn’t just ironclad, it was clad in iron, steel, titanium, lead, and diamonds. Lucien had thrown in contingencies for almost
everything
. Even implausible scenarios like if I somehow scooped Trey’s essence out of his body and transplanted it into someone else, the contract was still valid. If I killed Lucien again, Trey suffered. If I banished Lucien, Trey suffered. Even if I did nothing and left Lucien alone, Trey suffered.

He’d had a few weeks in the Lansing chapel to do nothing but stew over how I’d beaten him. He’d probably spent all that time figuring out just what sorts of clauses to throw in to cut me off at the knees. But he hadn’t considered the most basic point of all. I still had one avenue I could use.

I nodded towards the doors, where Trey stood in the shadows. He joined us in the room, and closed the doors behind him. “It’s true, I did.” He gave me a tight smile, and moved to stand opposite me on the other side of the table. “What’s this?” Trey asked, indicating the glowing circle of sigils in the carpet below his mother.

“Know how when you’re in kindergarten, your report card is all checks and check minuses?” I waved towards Catherine. “Plays well with others.
Big
check minus.”

Catherine hadn’t even lobbied a verbal protest yet, and the chance to do so had just been snatched out from under her. “This isn’t possible,” she insisted. “Why would you do something like this, Gentry?” She looked bewildered and devastated. There was even a touch of anger, like Trey had done this just to hurt her personally somehow. Like Trey would hand over his future for something frivolous.

Then again, she might call saving my life frivolous.
“I think the more important question is why you still don’t believe that your new pet demon has a hard-on for destroying your son.” Trusting Lucien wasn’t the greatest of Catherine’s crimes, but she’d enabled him to continue hurting people all over the city.

“There—there has to be a reason,” she said, voice a bit weaker. It didn’t take her long to recover. She turned towards me, her cold eyes narrowed. “What is this meant to be, then? Some sort of
intervention
?” She snarled the last word with a rage that surprised me. Catherine was the ice queen. Not the out-of-control
hothead.

“Your son just told you that he sold his soul to the devil, and you think this is about me?” I glanced at Jason, who had his fingers steepled in front of him, taking it all in.

“Braden?” Jason said my name like it was a question, but I’d learned enough about him to be able to read the question behind the question.
Is this really worth it? She’s a crazy, narcissistic twit who never met an actual color scheme she liked.
I may have embellished on his expression a bit. “The feud?”

“We’re getting off track,” I agreed.

“I would hate for him to lose his place,” she spat.

I looked between the two of them. It wouldn’t be enough just to get Catherine in line. That was exactly why the feud was such a problem in the first place. For a minute, just one, I had to forget that Jason was my father. But was it something that he would even be okay with? Could Jason even become something more than the secrets and lies that surrounded Belle Dam
?

“Do you really think you of all people have the right to walk in here demanding change?” Catherine interrupted. “Everything horrific that happened in this town only happened once you entered the picture. Your mother’s death, your uncle’s. Those fall on your head, not mine.”

I probably would have set her on fire if Trey hadn’t gotten there first. He slammed his fist down on the table in front of her, and shoved the contract towards her face. “Is that Braden’s signature on the bottom?” he demanded. “Is it?”

Catherine had to shift her head back, and even though the circle should have stopped Trey from getting too close to her, a golden aura spread around his skin where it pierced the binding, but the spell didn’t falter. I didn’t know if it was my magic making allowances for Trey, or his own complementing mine, but either way it was the golden light that drew Catherine’s eyes. The manifestation of her son’s new abilities.

Her eyes flew to Jason’s, and for the first time, I saw the fear there. Catherine still didn’t grasp what we were all doing here tonight, but she knew the cease-fire she had with Jason was more than broken. Now he had a reason to go after her son, if he wanted. Trey being normal had kept him safe, but Trey tapping into his powers? The powers that Catherine had deliberately kept from him? That made him a target. The same way I was a target.

“I haven’t made myself clear,” I said. “So let me tell you about what’s really going on in Belle Dam, and why the two of you have been played for suckers.” Trey pulled out his chair, and then to be a bit of a smart ass he extended his hand and did the same for mine with his golden magic. I ran my fingers through the strands as I sat. They felt like warm syrup and something more that was just
Trey.

“It started with a girl who saw things that no one else could see, and the demon that stole her future … ”

Neither one of them spoke, and it was hard to say how much of the story they believed. Lucien, a demon older than time, and Grace, a woman still alive long after she should have died. The feud between
them
that had trickled down into the city, and the real issues plaguing the city.