Page 5 of Buzz Kill (Smoke & Mirrors Tavern #7)

Chapter five

ALWIN

“Stay here,” Declan insisted again.

He’d been trying to convince me to stay behind since we left for the manor, but I’d refused every step of the way. I was the one who should have left him behind. Bringing him back here and forcing him into this mission was our best chance for success, but it was rather ruthless now that I knew the truth about what he’d been through.

Declan wasn’t from Eastbend. He had no roots there. Nothing but a relative he had no real connection with, and a place to escape the very family I was dragging him back to.

As far as everyone else knew, Declan claimed his family kicked him out. But even if I hadn’t seen his dreams, I’d already known he spent months trying to get behind the wards on Elliot’s house where his family couldn’t reach him. It made what we were forcing him to do rather terrible.

I wasn’t sure how much the others had put together and it certainly wasn’t my place to expose Declan’s secrets. Perhaps they wouldn’t have asked this of him if they’d known the truth, but I could make no such claim. I’d witnessed the things these people put him through myself, and I still brought him right back within their grasp.

He was right to be angry with us, but he seemed to have resigned himself to his fate overnight. The mission was imperative for our fight against the hunters and I didn’t usually waste time on things like guilt or regret, but this time the feeling was harder to shake.

“Give me the pendant,” I decided.

“What? Why?”

“I will go in alone.”

“That’s not happening,” he grumbled with a sigh. “You can’t even get past the wards without a Prescott letting you in. Let’s just get this over with. If they’ve changed the wards to keep me out this is going to be over real fast.”

We both knew that wouldn’t happen. The Prescotts were nothing if not arrogant. They likely expected him to return on his own when he ran out of resources. While they used horrifyingly extreme measures to force him to use magic, he would have wanted for nothing where money was involved as long as he remained in the mansion.

Declan led me to the edge of the property near the servant’s quarters, a spot he’d decided ahead of time was the safest place to enter. While we were more likely to run into someone, the servants wouldn’t question the family head’s presence. Declan wasn’t the only one who feared his father.

His shaky hand wrapped around mine to bring me inside and, as expected, the wards let us through. While our glamours were already in place, Declan’s presence shifted as we began to cross the property. His shoulders straightened, his head lifted and his movements became deliberate and purposeful in a way they usually weren’t. This man who’d never learned to fight couldn’t be underestimated. He was an expert at surviving and his ability to imitate his father was impressive.

Several lower fae were tending the grounds as we approached, but the second they sensed our presence they vanished from sight. We’d officially been spotted, but as Declan predicted, no one dared to question us.

He led the way, walking purposefully around the side of the house, but suddenly stopped and slipped in through the servant’s entrance. I had no choice but to follow. Using the servant’s entrance while wearing his father’s face was sure to draw attention. It certainly wasn’t part of the plan. If he’d told me he planned to use this entrance, I would have created servant glamours for us in advance. Still, it was too late to change anything now, we’d already been noticed. More than one servant startled at his appearance and scrambled to get out of the way.

The stern look remained on his face as he swiftly led me through the kitchen, but the second we turned the corner, one shaking hand snatched mine and dragged me into a hidden corridor. Another path meant only for the servants.

“Does your father often visit the servant’s chambers?” I asked quietly.

Declan shook his head, his breaths coming a little too fast. “He doesn’t pay any attention to their existence, but…”

But this was the only way to avoid running into his family, even if it was a little more conspicuous. His hand still gripped mine and the shaking hadn’t stopped since we’d stepped foot on the property. He was truly terrified of being back here and my guilt settled in a little deeper. At this point if one of the servants saw us, there would be no way to avoid suspicion.

“Does this lead where we need to go?”

“No. But we can get fairly close.”

“And I will assume the location of the information we need is held is a fair distance from the entrance?”

“It is.”

Which meant we would be in the servant’s area too long not to be noticed. Declan didn’t need me to spell out the issue for him, but his adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

His hand gripped mine tighter. “I know,” he rasped. “But I can’t just walk through this house like it isn’t the first thing I see in every nightmare I’ve ever had. We’re going to get caught back here, I know, but I can’t pretend to be him out there. He’s never feared anything in his life and I can’t even take a step toward the front door without being flooded with terror. I thought I could do this without making an ass out of myself, but I can’t.”

“It’s fine. We will go this way.”

Declan let out a breath. “And when we’re seen?”

“We will take advantage of the servant’s tendencies rather than your father’s.”

“What does that mean?”

“We will have to behave in a way that would make them fear revealing what they saw.”

Declan arched an eyebrow, but the presence of another kept him from continuing to ask questions. By the time the small fae turned the corner up ahead, I already had Declan pinned to the wall and my lips were on his. Declan’s gasp was covered by the fae’s equally shocked reaction, but while she quickly disappeared, the sorcerer latched on and was in no hurry to let go.

I removed his hand from my belt and broke away, a little surprised by how quickly he’d changed directions. A slow smirk turned up one corner of his lips.

“This is a much better plan, let’s forget the whole mission and do that instead.”

“There was someone coming,” I explained. “If they believe your father is having an affair they’ll be more likely to accept him being somewhere he shouldn’t be and less likely to report it. You were too terrified to leave this corridor a moment ago, what was that?”

Declan snorted. “My father’s affairs are nothing new, it’s that you’re a man and not a sorcerer that will shock them into silence. And you were the one who pounced on me, so I went with it. It’s your fault, anyway. You spent the past few nights playing hero and now it feels like nothing will hurt me when I’m in your arms. That’s what you get for messing with someone’s subconscious.”

The honesty in his words rendered me speechless, but Declan didn’t seem to think anything of what he’d so easily revealed. He was so very human sometimes. Which only made what we were asking of him worse.

Declan straightened his clothes and led the way down the hall again. We ran into several more occupants, each time either holding hands or locked in an embrace. The servants either scurried off before anything could be said or Declan dragged his attention away from me long enough to aim a cold glare their way. These fae were clearly as terrified of the head of the family as Declan was.

That fact wasn’t surprising to me, this wasn’t my first time in Prescott manor. Years ago they’d sought out a guide to lead them through some lesser-known parts of Faerie. They were areas that I’d personally been to, and so I agreed to a meeting.

That they’d sought a guide at all despite how powerful the family was meant they knew how dangerous those lands were. They were home to monstrous creatures that even I struggled to subdue. And because of that, they held little else. I’d only entered that territory at the request of a family who’s son had traveled there seeking a trophy and failed to return. If was far too late to save him by the time they offered their reward to anyone who could bring him back, but they honored the agreement when I returned with what was left of the young elf.

When I caught word that the Prescott family was seeking a guide to such a place, I assumed the mission would be the same and offered to retrieve their lost relative on my own rather than guiding them through such a dangerous place. After much resistance, they revealed there was no missing family member and they refused to disclose the reason for their interest in such a place. In the end, I declined the request no matter how many times they raised their offer and we parted on less than friendly terms.

The entire ordeal would have been several years before Declan and Elliot were born, but I did run into a child a little younger than Aiden was at the time. His face was bruised and swollen and I’d immediately assumed he was a servant child who’d been punished severely and offered to buy him for my household. The Prescott family, however, informed me that the child was, in fact, a relative who’d gotten carried away with his magic practice and had an accident. They’d assured me the healer was on the way, but I'd slipped the child a healing charm just in case. Since the boy wasn’t a servant, there’d been nothing more I could do.

I gave little attention to things I could not change, but I still sometimes wondered if that child survived his time with this family. He would have been around ten years older than Declan, but I hadn’t seen him in any of his dreams, nor had Declan mentioned another cousin. Perhaps he’d managed to escape.

Regardless, it was that experience with the family that gave me insight into Declan’s actions from the beginning. At first, I took his claims at face value and when he claimed to have nothing but selfish reasons for tracking down Elliot. I believed him to be just another Prescott. But while Declan was a convincing actor, the more I observed him, the more I realized he wasn’t like the rest of his family. I kept an eye on him simply because he was potentially bringing trouble to the town where my brother and niece or nephew resided, but in doing so, his true intentions became clear and my opinion of him changed.

We came to the end of the servant’s hall and Declan took a moment to peek out into the main house. It was a suspicious move his father would never have made and I tugged him back almost immediately.

“You are wearing your father’s face. Move with purpose and no one will question you. Where is this information held?”

“The archive. It’s up the stairs and at the back of the hall.”

“We should move before we are seen.”

Declan took a breath to steady himself and dropped my hand. He slipped out the door and took the stairs a little too quickly to be considered casual. I followed him to the end of the hall where he pressed a hand to a heavy wood door. The subtle scent of the magic touched my nose and he turned the knob, taking my hand to bring me past the secondary ward. Declan had been right. Without a Prescott bringing us inside, this would have been nearly impossible to pull off without being caught.

The archive was impressive. The amount of books and registers rivaled any library and rows of cabinets and drawers lined the walls, no doubt holding countless rare magical items and treasures. There was a secondary room to our left that was warded with enough magic that even I could sense it from a distance. That area likely held their most precious treasures and I doubted even Declan could easily access it. Luckily, what we were after wouldn’t be so heavily guarded.

“Do you know where the information would be?”

“Nope,” Declan answered, swiping a few crystals and trinkets from a case on his way to the shelves. “But I’ve seen it, so if we can find the right section I should be able to find it pretty quickly.”

“What were those items you took?”

“No clue. This here is information about the council and the history of its members. Check the next section.”

“Locations of the veil collapses and barrier construction.”

“Keep going.”

The two of us covered half the room and spent more time in the house than I’d hoped before we finally came across information on the hunters. These shelves covered a huge section of the room and included stacks of magically preserved scrolls and hand bound papers. Declan skipped over the older information and skimmed the leather bound collections. He paused when he hit one section and the expression on his face changed.

“What’s wrong?”

I looked at the books where he stopped and noticed a collection of heavy books, each wrapped in the same deep green leather. If he was expecting to recognize the book by its cover, there was no way to know which of these tomes the information we needed was in.

“There’s no way we’re getting out of here with this many books,” he murmured.

I pulled out an empty elven holding pouch and tucked the first book inside. Since the books were quite large, I could only fit one at a time through the opening, but we worked together, shoving them in as quickly as we could. Declan started with the far end of the stack and I grabbed from the beginning, which meant by the time we heard someone enter the archive, several books in the middle still remained on the shelf.