Shadow Blood: Kallen's Tale (Witch Fairy #4.5) (11 page)

Xandra looks up at Grandmother.  “There are actually other people’s souls in side of me?” 

Grandmother nods grimly.  “Yes.”

To me, Xandra says, “Did I really do that in the kitchen?”

I would prefer not to have this conversation again.  Xandra may not have been herself, but Kegan does not have the ‘extra soul bits’ excuse.  I shoot daggers at him with my eyes before saying to Xandra, “Yes.”

Her face falls.  “I am so sorry.  There aren’t words to express how sorry I am.”

“I know.”  That comes out a little gruffer than I meant it to.

“Kallen, honestly, I would not…”

I need to make her understand I am not upset with
her
anymore.  I touch her cheek and then kiss her lightly.  “I know.  It was difficult to see.  I simply need time to erase the scene from my mind; but I am no longer angry with you.”

She wipes at the tears that have inexplicably begun to fall again.  “I’d still be mad at you.”

I laugh because she probably would be.  “More proof that I am the superior Fairy in this relationship.”  I expect a snarky response but she just smiles.  That tells me how shaken up she is about the whole thing.  I wrap an arm around her again and pull her close.

“I do not believe that there is anything more to be done at the moment.  Perhaps you can take the first watch, Kallen.  I will relieve you in a few hours so that you may get some sleep, as well.

Right.  That is going to happen.  “I do not believe I will be able to sleep.  If I am tired tomorrow, I will relinquish her to your care so that I may nap.”  There is no room for argument in my voice this time.

Grandmother nods.  “Fair enough.  If you change your mind, let me know.”  She narrows her eyes at me.  “By knocking on my door this time.”

What can I say; I was panicked at the time.  “Of course.”

After Grandmother leaves, I stand up and offer my hand to Xandra.  She takes it and stands up.  I turn to lead her out of the room when she calls out softly to my cousin.  “Kegan.”

Slowly, he turns around.  He avoids my eyes completely when he says, “Yes?”

“I am so sorry for whatever I did.”  Her voice is so heartbreaking I want to wrap my arms around her again and sweep her away.  But I understand her need to clear the air.  I should as well.

Kegan nods and turns around but now it is my turn to make amends.  “Kegan.”

He is a lot more wary when he turns around this time.  “Cousin?”

“I believe that you did not initiate the encounter I walked in on.”  I cannot help but smile when I say more to Xandra than him.  “I also understand that she is difficult to resist.”

Relief washes over Kegan’s face.  “I did try to resist her.”

He tried.  That tunnels under my skin making room for my anger to take root again.  My voice is pure steel when I say, “If it ever happens again, I expect you to be successful.”

Chapter 17

Once we are in Xandra’s room again, I ask, “Tired?”

She snorts.  Always a lovely thing for her to do.  “Yeah, like I want to go back to sleep.  Lord knows what I’ll do next.”

I am not even torn.  Her new alter ego may be eager to consummate our relationship but it would not really be Xandra I would be sleeping with.  I prefer to wait until it is.  “Nothing, if I can help it.”

She sits down on the edge of the bed.  “Kallen, you really do believe that it wasn’t me doing those things, right?”

How can I make her understand?  Gently pushing her back on the bed, I kneel over her and look directly in her eyes as I say, “If I did not believe that, I would not be here.”  I run my finger along her lip.  “I simply wish I had arrived sooner.”  And done more to stop it.

She smiles.  “Me, too.”

“I do feel sorry for my cousin.  To believe that you desired him,” I shake my head as I think of the expression on Kegan’s face when Xandra was about to pounce on him.  “He may never be the same.”

She laughs.  “Yeah, right.”

My brows rise.  “You truly do not understand the draw you have, do you?”

“Unlike you,” she teases.

With a chuckle, I say, “I see no reason for false modesty.”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

I hope I do not have to stop at just kissing her.  We may not be having sex yet, but I am hungry for her touch and her body.  I want to make sure she has no reason to find passion elsewhere.  I capture her lips in a kiss that I hope will make her forget about everything else.  Without taking my lips from hers, I slide her up the bed until I can flatten my body against hers.  I groan deeply when she wraps her legs around me.  My god, I want her so desperately.  My hands have minds of their own as they seek out every curve, every inch of her silky skin.  Her hands are just as eager, just as desperate.  With only half a thought as to what I am doing, I remove the slip of a nightie she is wearing.  She presses her nearly naked body against mine and I am barely able to keep from removing my own clothes.  I do remove most of them until I am just wearing boxer shorts.  Dangerous, I know.  I also do not care at the moment.

I am so wrapped up in her touch that it takes me a moment to realize she is drawing magic.  A lot of it.  Dragging my lips from hers, I look down at her scared eyes.  “Xandra?”

“I think you’re going to want to move away from me,” she says as she struggles to get her magic under control.  What the hell?  My mind bursts with more expressive oaths than that when flames appear above us.  Rolling us away from it, I pull Xandra from the bed and halfway across the room.

To make things even stranger, there is now music.  The flames break apart and look like little fire people.  Little dancing fire people.  “Xandra, what are you doing?”

She looks up at me helplessly.  “It’s not me.  It’s the little bits of extra soul I’m carrying around.”

It is times like this that I wish she had a better handle on her magic.  “Then take control and make them stop.”  She closes her eyes and I feel her fighting the magic.  With little success.

Just half a second ago, I thought the spreading, dancing flames were the most concerning things in the room.  That was before Xandra’s mother comes sliding through the wall.  “Xandra, I smell smoke.  Is everything alright in here…” 

She chokes on her words as she takes in her topless and mostly bottomless daughter pressed against my chest.  I am not sure which of the three of us is the most red – Xandra, the flames, or myself.  I would put money on me though.  I would imagine that Xandra’s mother was a scary Witch when she was alive because she is terrifying as a spirit.  I brace myself for the onslaught of her words and her magic.  I also dress myself and cover Xandra from neck to toe in a something resembling a flannel tent.  Okay, that may have been overkill but I am not about to change her again.  The part of me that refuses to be a coward keeps me rooted next to Xandra’s side.  The part of me that wishes I was a coward wants to get the hell out of this room as quickly as possible.

“Julienne, are they okay?” Xandra’s father asks as he also floats through the wall.  Yet again I am thankful that I have not been raised by spirits.  Privacy is definitely at a premium when you are.  It does not take her father long to pick up on the molten tension in the room and, I am sure, guess at its cause.  He may not have magic but that does not rule him out as an accessory, or perpetrator, of murder. 

“Xandra Illuminata Smith, you will put that fire out right now.” 

The other souls inside of Xandra are apparently not as terrified of her mother as I am at the moment.  The flame people have become tiny coffin bearers and I believe a Cowan funeral march is the music playing in the room.  This is the kind of situation that will be funny later.  Twenty years later. 

After an internal struggle Xandra is finally able to put out the flames.  Her mother does not give any of us time to speak before she says, “Kallen, Jim, leave the room.” 

I cannot leave Xandra to face her mother alone.  I am just as responsible, if not more so, for what happened as Xandra is.  After all, I am the one that removed our clothing.  “I think I should sta…” is all I can get out before the Witch spirit cracks a bolt of lightning behind me.  Son of a bitch that was close!  I believe my heels are singed.  I am positive the backs of my legs are now hairless. 

“Get out,” Xandra’s mother says in a tone of voice that tells me the next lightning bolt will do more than make me hairless.  With a helpless look in Xandra’s direction I back out of the room.  I do not trust exposing my back to the Witch.  Xandra’s expression is understanding as I close the door behind me. 

But I am not going far.  I am not afraid to face whatever consequences result from our actions.  If Grandmother had walked in on us in such a…compromising situation, our hand-fasting would already be planned.  Strange how not so long ago that would have terrified me even more than her mother.  I have dated a few girls.  Nothing serious and certainly no one I was willing to risk a lifelong hand-fasting with.  But it is different for Xandra.  I know that we are destined to be together.

About a minute after I close the door, Xandra’s father floats through it.  “I haven’t seen Julienne this pissed since she told me what her parents tried to do to her.”  He becomes thoughtful for a moment.  Perhaps he is planning my slow demise.  “I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Julienne is probably overreacting to whatever happened between you two.” 

Trying to keep my lower jaw from dropping to the floor is difficult when I seem to have lost all muscle control due to the great amount of shock I have suffered this evening.  Before I can even consider how to respond to that, he holds his hand up.  “Now, I am not saying that whatever you two were doing is not reason for concern,” even his cheeks are red as he says this, “I am simply trying to see this from Xandra’s point of view.  As far as I can tell, you are the only constant in Xandra’s life right now.  She depends on you to be there for her and you always are.  So if you two are making out now and then, it’s okay.  Hell, I was seventeen once.  But she is still my little girl.”  I get a very pointed look here. 

I assume his idea of making out is not broad enough to cover what his wife walked in on.  My lips refuse to form the words to tell him that though.  We spend the next few minutes in awkward silence until Xandra’s mother floats through the door. 

I cannot pretend that
she
does not know what happened.  Trying not to meet her husband’s eyes, I say, “Ms. Smith, if you feel that a right hand-fasting is in order, I would completely understand.  I would be proud to marry your daughter.”

Her eyebrows rise.  “How about if the two of you just slow down some.  I may be a ghost, but I’m still too young for grandchildren.”

Whoa, things were not quite that far.  Yet.  “Of course.”

“Hold up a minute,” Xandra’s father says in surprise.  “What
exactly
went on in there?”

The Witch looks back and forth between her husband and daughter who has now joined us in the hall.  Whatever she and Xandra said to each other calmed her down quite a bit.  She is almost Zen when she says, “Nothing that we need to be concerned about at the moment.  Xandra is about to tell us about the pieces of souls that attached to hers when she was in hell.” 

“What?!” Her father has lost any thought of the discussion that was taking place.  Now he looks terrified as he gives Xandra an assessing look as if he looks hard enough, he will see the extra bits. 

“I don’t have all the details yet, Xandra’s going to fill us in now.  We should go downstairs and find Isla and Tabitha.” 

Her parents may have forgotten all about the conversation but I have not.  Xandra turns to follow her parents down the stairs but I grab her arm.  “May I speak with you for a moment before we go down?”

She frowns as she looks back and forth between her parents’ backs and me.  “Okay, but we shouldn’t be too long.” 

True.  Running a nervous hand through my hair, I take a deep breath and say, “Perhaps we should become legally wed.”

“What?  No.”

Not exactly the joyful yes I was expecting.  Though I have to admit, a tiny part of me is relieved.  We are young but…“Xandra, if your mother talks to my grandmother about this…”

She snorts.  “Um, I don’t think that’ll be an issue.” 

Sure.  Her mother tends to let things slip when she is angry.  Thinking of that, why is she not still furious with us?  “Your mother is not insistent that we have broken the rules of the left hand-fasting?”

Suspicion washes over Xandra’s face.  “Is there something I don’t know about this left hand-fasting thing?”

Oops.  I backed myself into a corner now.  She really is ignorant of the laws of courting in the Fae realm.  Nothing we have done fits cleanly into them.  “We may have…pushed the rules to the absolute limit.”  And a little bit beyond.

She stands akimbo and glares up at me.  “I would like a list, a
specific
list, of what the rules are, because I was under the impression that things only changed if we have sex.” 

She cannot be this naïve.  “Xandra, we practically were.”

Her anger dissolves as quickly as it rose up.  “Yeah, about that.”  She bites her bottom lip in a way that makes me nervous about what she will say next.  Probably something along the lines of ‘my room is now off limits to you.’  “I kind of promised my mom that we’d slow things down a bit.”