Page 12 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

I awoke the next day to the smell of eggs and bacon wafting in through my bedroom door like the residue of a life that was dead and gone. It took me several minutes to fully rouse myself from my sleep and remember where I was—that I was in Hollow Hills and not back in Florida with my dad just steps away from me, cooking us breakfast like he’d done every morning of my life.

Grief needled my heart as I rubbed my palms against my eyes, still exhausted on account of having spent the majority of the night tossing and turning in bed thanks to Dominic’s late-night visit and the emotional rollercoaster he’d chucked me on.

My lips twisted into a scowl, primed to curse his name into the heavens when it suddenly occurred to me that I may have been having a stroke right then. Because why else would I smell eggs and bacon cooking in a house where the only two people who required food couldn’t make a slice of toast without burning it.

Kicking off my covers, I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and bolted downstairs, not even bothering to change out of my pajamas. If I was in some kind of medical emergency, I needed to be with people who could call for help. I blew into the kitchen like a storm rolling off the coast and then froze in my tracks as I took in the colorful spread set out on the dining table.

It was a breakfast feast fit for royalty, including the eggs and bacon I had smelled from my room, stacks of golden pancakes, magazine-worthy fruit platters, and all sorts of other fixings that definitely didn’t come from a package or box. As amazing as it looked and smelled, I didn’t waste a second more of my time ogling any of it, nor did I bother greeting Gabriel or Jaqueline who were both seated at the table, not eating.

My gaze zeroed in on the petite, red-headed woman standing at the stove wearing a chef’s coat and holding a spatula in one hand and the frying pan handle in the other. Her tongue was sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she worked something in the pan with pure determination.

I tried to get a better look at her face, as though I might be able to place the stranger if I just squinted at her hard enough. I may have been off my game lately, but I was pretty sure I’d remember running into a chef and inviting her over to my house. “Um, hello…who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

“Relax, Tiger,” answered Tessa as she walked back into the kitchen holding an overflowing plate of food in her hand as she simultaneously shoveled a fork full of pancakes into her mouth. “Can’t you see she’s our new chef?”

“ Our new chef?” I repeated, even more confused. Had I fallen into some sort of time warp? “When did you hire a chef?”

“Goodness, forgive me! Where have my manners gone?” squealed the woman as she wiped her hands on the bar cloth hanging from the waistband of her pants and then rushed over to shake my hand. “I’m Isadora. It’s so very nice to meet you,” she said, rattling my entire arm up and down. “I’ve already gone ahead and served breakfast, but if it’s not to your liking or you prefer something else, I’m more than happy to whip it up for you. Truly. Anything you want.”

I immediately frowned at the telling glaze in her eyes as she dropped my hand and then rushed back to the stove like her life depended on it.

“Who the hell compelled her?” My gaze swung to Gabriel and then Jaqueline, waiting for one of them to fess up seeing as they were the only two Revenants in the room.

Jaqueline momentarily lowered the grimoire she was combing through and shook her head as Gabriel held both his hands up in a gesture of innocence.

“Don’t look at me,” he said, pressing his lips together as though he were hiding a smirk. “I would never.”

My glare veered to Tessa because…well, there was no one else left in the room to accuse.

“The hell if I know,” she said and then chugged a glass of what looked like freshly squeezed orange juice. “She was already in here cooking up a storm when I came downstairs this morning.”

“So no one knows where she came from or who sent her and you all just let her into our house?” I gaped at each of them like the dimwits they obviously were. “What if she’s a spy?”

“A spy?” repeated Tessa, laughing. “I think if someone was going to send in a mole, they’d be a little less conspicuous about it.”

“Maybe being conspicuous was exactly their plan! Maybe that’s exactly what they wanted you to think so we’d let our guards down and let her in!” I barked out haphazardly and then marched over to Isadora, leaning down into her personal space to grab her attention. She didn’t bother meeting my eyes. “Where do you come from? Who sent you here?” I demanded, blowing out each word slowly and loudly as though she were visiting us from another planet and didn’t understand our native tongue.

“Mr. Huntington sent me, of course,” she answered calmly as she sprinkled grated cheese into the frying pan.

“Mr. Huntington?” I recoiled in bafflement, apparently not too quick on the uptake without my morning coffee. “You mean Dominic?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Blackburn. He didn’t supply his first name.”

I scoffed. Of course he didn’t. He was too busy stealing her free will to remember his manners.

Why in the world would Dominic send a compelled human chef over to my house, against their will, and think I’d be okay with that? He’d obviously lost all sense right along with his feelings.

I turned back to Isadora, determined to make this right. “Look, I’m sorry that you came all the way here for nothing, but there’s a been a mistake. We aren’t looking for any help so if you just tell me how much I owe you for the day, we’ll get you squared up and you can be on your way. That sound good?”

“No can do. My salary has already been paid for the next six months,” she informed and then turned back to the stove, folding over the omelet she was dutifully preparing.

“Six months?” I glanced back at Tessa, searching for some kind of commiseration in my shock and outrage, but she was too busy ramming more food into her mouth to notice. “So, we’re all just okay with this?” I asked, my question directed at Gabriel then. Surely, he would have a problem with some helpless mortal being compelled to serve us like we were a bunch of blue-blooded nobles.

“I don’t see the harm in it,” he answered with a wary shrug of his shoulders. “She’s being paid, very well I’m sure, and you do need to eat.”

“Yes, and I can cook for my damn self, thank you very much.”

Gabriel made a pained face, like he’d smelled one of my past kitchen concoctions firsthand while Tessa snorted between chews.

Okay, so I couldn’t cook for myself, per say , but I could freaking learn. If I wanted to. How hard could it be?

“I think he did a nice thing here,” concluded Gabriel.

“A nice thing?” I repeated and then pointed over to Isadora who was still paying me and my outburst no mind. “He’s compelling her!” I shrieked like it was the scandal of the century.

I wasn’t sure why I was so worked up about it, but after how we’d left things off last night, it just seemed like something I should feel indignant about. He’d literally walked out on me two days ago and then returned like it was nothing equipped with intel, only to refuse to let me track down the lead with him, because he “worked better alone” to then being concerned about whether I had eaten or not only to end the night by practically throwing me back into Trace’s figurative arms. Forgive me if I felt a little disoriented.

“Perhaps he’s just looking out for you the only way he knows how to,” suggested Gabriel, his tone softer then, as though worried he might further set me off.

“By forcing a human to cater to me?”

“By making sure you’re taken care of. That you stay properly nourished.”

“I mean, you are looking a little gaunt lately,” pointed out Tessa—still chewing and still not helping.

“If he was so concerned about me, he’d be here with me, wouldn’t he?” I retorted, ignoring Tessa’s dig because I definitely hadn’t been eating well as of late and could probably stand to pack on a few extra pounds. “If he cared about me, he wouldn’t keep walking out on me,” I murmured, mostly to myself. Because they hadn’t been there last night. They hadn’t seen the way he’d toyed with me like it was all just a game to him.

Like I was a game.

“Maybe this is the best he could do right now, given the circumstances,” offered Gabriel, his gaze unintentionally veering to the hallway that led to the basement door.

Turmoil seized my chest and stomach, making my mind spiral with questions.

Was Gabriel implying that Dominic was doing this because of Trace? That he was looking out for me—caring for me—in the only way he knew how to now—from afar? But why, and to what end?

None of this made any sense to me, I realized as I slumped down into the chair at the kitchen table across from Tessa, the fiery outrage simmering to a dull roar.

Isadora was beside me in an instant, setting down a plate of food brimming with bacon, fresh fruit and the omelet she had been working on moments earlier.

My shoulders sagged in defeat as I inhaled the delicious aromas wafting up from my plate. Tessa shot me a knowing smirk like she knew my armor was cracking with every sniff.

“Fresh pepper?” asked Isadora, holding the wooden peppercorn grinder above my omelet.

Fucking dammit .

All the fight left my body as I looked up at our new housemate and smiled bashfully like the hypocrite that I was. “Yes, please,” I squeaked.

Tessa snorted but I was ignoring her existence entirely then.

“Thank you, Isadora,” I said instead as I picked up my fork and wet my lips, staring down at the food like a lovesick fool.

“Please call me Isa ,” she said as she placed a glass of orange juice on the table in front of my plate. “Bon appetite.”

Bashfully, I thanked her again and then turned back to my plate, beyond ready to dig in, but Isa just continued to stand there beside me. Grinning at me. Kind of hovering. I shifted uncomfortably. “Um…would you like to join us?” I asked, not sure what else to say to get her to stop staring at me.

“Oh, heavens, no. I’m just waiting to be dismissed.”

Dismissed? I glanced at Tessa who responded with a shrug while licking bacon grease off her fingers. Still super helpful, Tess . “Okay, well, you don’t have to wait to be, you know, dismissed or anything like that. You’re free to come and go as you please, okay? This isn’t Buckingham Palace,” I said, laughing awkwardly at my own joke. No response. I cleared my throat and then shriveled in my chair as she continued to stand there and wait. “You’re dismissed,” I muttered begrudgingly.

“Wonderful. I’ll be back to tidy up in a little bit,” she said and then shuffled out of the kitchen.

I stared at her retreating form for a few seconds, briefly wondering where she was planning on going. Or rather, what else she’d been compelled to do.

Shaking away the uncomfortable thought, I turned back to my plate of food and sectioned off a bite-sized piece of omelet with the side of my fork. “Remind me to thank our self-appointed Human Resource director for that epic level of awkwardness,” I said, stabbing the piece with my fork and then popping it into my mouth. My eyes rounded out as I all but moaned at the deliciousness exploding in my mouth.

Gabriel grinned. “Speaking of my brother, I thought I heard him come by last night. How did that go?”

“It went as expected,” I answered vaguely as I finished chewing, deciding to keep the more confusing, personal parts of our rendezvous to myself since I doubted that Gabriel was bringing it up over breakfast to hear about my relationship status with his brother. “He heard about the Roderick sisters, too. It looks like Morgan’s vision might be accurate after all. For once,” I muttered the last part under my breath and took another bite.

Jaqueline lowered the grimoire she’d been reading, apparently finding the current topic interesting enough to participate in. “Has he located them yet?”

I shook my head. “He said he’d let me know when he had news. As far as we know, they were last seen outside of Chapel Hill,” I informed, referring to the small neighboring town to the west of us.

“He’s tracking them alone?” asked Gabriel, appearing confused by this. I could tell by the tone of his voice and the crease between his brows that he’d expected us to do it together.

He wasn’t the only one.

“I’m not entirely sure what his plans are. Things are still…” I couldn’t seem to find the word to finish the sentence. Weird. Bad. Broken. Confusing. Either word could work, yet neither one seemed to do justice to the doomed state of my relationship with Dominic.

Gabriel nodded his understanding and said no more on the subject as Tessa tossed her fork onto the plate and sank back against her chair.

“Well, that’s just fantastic,” she snapped, finally ticked off about something enough to stop eating. “As if we don’t have enough problems to deal with right now. It’s already going to be hard enough to get to Nikki and her demon spawn as it is. Now we have the Three Roderick Bitches to contend with on top of everything else we have going on.”

While Tessa hadn’t been as quick to discount Morgan’s vision as I’d been when I’d told her about it yesterday, she hadn’t been all that worried about it either. Her reasoning being that since Morgan had only seen the Roderick sisters gathered around the baby after he was already born, that meant that we still had plenty of time to come up with a plan to get rid of them before they had a chance to make good on whatever the hell Morgan had seen them doing.

But if they were already spotted the next town over…

“Guaranteed they’re on their way to the Incubator’s house as we speak,” warned Tessa, her voice getting bleaker by the second. “That is, if they’re not already there.”

I frowned at her. Mostly because she was totally spiraling, and it really wasn’t a good look for her. But also because she did have a point. Their arrival was imminent, and having the Roderick sisters in town was going to complicate everything . A gnawing feeling twisted in my stomach at the thought of them getting to Nikki before I did—a feeling that was quickly followed by the sudden and strange urge to, I don’t know… go to Nikki? Talk to her? Warn her?

I couldn’t exactly place the foreign feeling, but it was making my skin feel like bugs were crawling all over it.

I shook away the discomfort and focused back on the topic at hand. “If they were already in town, we would have gotten word. There’s still time, Tess. We’ll handle it, just like we’re handling everything else.”

“And what exactly are we handling so far?” she shot back, her eyebrow arched in condemnation. “We haven’t translated the grimoire or gotten hold of the Sang Noir. You barely have a grasp on your abilities let alone any control of those brand-new wings of yours. The Order is plotting against us. The Horsemen are gunning for you. The son of Satan is on the way. Demons are filling up this town faster than we can vanquish them. And now the Roderick sisters have joined the party. So, tell me again how we’re handling any of it?”

I scrunched my nose at her summary as though it were giving off a foul odor. “Look, I admit, we haven’t made all that much progress yet , but it’s not like we don’t have a plan. It’s not like we aren’t making any moves. We’re playing smarter, not harder.”

“Call it whatever you want, but it’s looking more and more like we’re on the losing side of the war here,” she said as she tossed a piece of fruit around her plate.

My stomach soured at her words. Mostly because they were a little too close to the truth for comfort. The odds were stacked against us, and no doubt our list of enemies had become a mile high, but I still refused to give up hope. This wasn’t over yet. We hadn’t even gotten started.

But she was right. We needed a win. Some kind of gain to keep the morale up.

“Can you go to Temple today?” I asked her, feeling a plan take root in my mind.

“I can probably swing by before lunch.” Her eyes thinned with suspicion. “Why?”

“I need you to get me every Reaper codex you can get your hands on.”

“To do what with?” she asked as Gabriel and Jaqueline both met my eyes with the same question on their faces.

“What do you think?” I asked rhetorically. “I need to learn how to port, like yesterday.” If we had any hope of gaining the upper hand, we needed the Sang Noir. Something was telling me that ancient, Angel-encoded book was going to spill all the secrets we so desperately sought. The truth about my bloodline. My abilities. The Horseman. Maybe even about the Order.

“Oh, and what?” Tessa huffed. “You’re just going to teach yourself how to port?”

I shrugged, not seeing another good option on the table. “Pretty much.”

Jaqueline made a strange scoff-like noise at the back of her throat. “Jemma, I think you might be underestimating the complexity of attempting something like this,” she said, her gaze careening from me to Tessa and then back again. “Diving into an unknown ability without an experienced tutor is dangerous.”

“Well, take a good look around, Jackie,” I said, widening my arms like I was sailing on the helm of the Titanic. “Do you see any experienced tutors around here? Because I don’t.”

“There’s a perfectly good one sitting in the basement right now,” pointed out Tessa as I balled my hands into fists to keep from lunging at her.

How many times was I going to need to say this? “Trace. Is. Not. An. Option,” I grounded out, throwing daggers at her by way of my eyes.

“Well, he might be if you bothered asking him.”

“Seeing as I can’t get within five feet of him without him going ballistic, I’d say he already answered that question,” I shot back, trying to keep my voice from cracking with emotion. The more I thought about the sad state of affairs between Trace and I, the weaker I felt, and I really didn’t want to feel weak right now. “All we have is me , Tessa, so you better start getting comfortable with it. Now, are you going to get me the codices or not?”

“Not.”

I gaped at her. That was not the answer I was expecting.

Tessa rolled her eyes. “How exactly do you think I’m going to be able to walk out of Temple with a bunch of Reaper manuals in my hands and not tip off the entire Council?”

My mouth opened and then quickly shut as I considered that tiny detail. “Okay, fine,” I said, giving her that one. I clearly hadn’t thought the plan all the way through. “Then there has to be another way.”

“I’m all ears,” said Tessa and then crossed her arms, waiting for me to validate my claim.

Apparently, I was on my own in this. I racked my brain, mulling it around in my head as each of them quickly got bored and went back to whatever they were doing before, like the plan was already as good as dead in the water.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, fam .

Ignoring them, I chewed on my nails as I tried to work out a way around our latest obstacle.

“What about Trace’s house?” I asked suddenly, bouncing a glance around the table. “He has a home library, right? They must have a treasure trove of Reaper books there.” Especially if Trace’s dad had been anything like my uncle Karl had been when it came to preserving all the pretties.

Tessa considered it. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” she said as I forced myself to ignore the shock in her tone. “I’ll pass by this afternoon and see what I can find.”

“Perfect.” I clapped my hands together and then sank back against my chair, feeling mighty satisfied with myself.

We finally had a plan in place, and it felt great. I mean, it may not have been the best plan, or even a great plan, and it certainly wasn’t a fool-proof one either. But hey, at least we had something .