Page 29 of Just a Little Wicked (Wicked Sisters #2)
Holly
Do you think my sister and your brother are really hooking up? Also, you didn’t wake me up when you left this morning.
Connor
Hey, Wicked. You looked tired. I wanted you to sleep.
Holly
I wonder why I was so tired
Connor
Did you get rest? Because I think I’m going to wear you out again tonight.
Connor
As for Winter and Erikson, I don’t know. But I’ve got a feeling . . .
“ W hat did you say to him?” Erikson asked.
They were standing at the bottom of the steps that led to Atlantes’ house, and Winter was staring at her phone screen, willing the cranky Witch to text her back.
Meanwhile, Erikson was wondering just how unhappy the Witch was going to be when he opened the door and saw their faces again.
“I said, ‘Atlantes, I’m outside your house. I need something and I’m not going away until I get it.’”
“Tell him you’re going to unleash your power and blow out more of his network if he doesn’t open the door.”
Winter quickly tapped out the text, and not twenty seconds later the front door banged open and Atlantes glowered down at them, his skin sparking with iridescent flecks of magic. “What do you need from me?”
“We were just approached by someone from the Shadow Council,” Winter said.
Some of the prismatic magic coating his knuckles disappeared. “Where?”
“Not ten minutes from here.”
The emerald of his eyes glowed brighter. “What did she want?”
Winter recounted the exchange, and when she finished, he said, “Great. I’m so glad you’ve brought me to their attention. And why, exactly, couldn’t you text me about this new development instead of coming back here when I expressly warned you not to?”
“I need your help.”
His jaw dropped. “Are you . . . are you fucking with me right now? Do you have memory loss?”
“Can Witches shield themselves from visions of the future?”
His thick brows lowered and he didn’t answer, which seemed to be answer enough for Winter. “I need to do that. I need to learn how to shield myself from the council, and I need you to teach me.”
“No.”
He turned his back to her, but she said quickly, “This affects you too, Atlantes. Unless a miracle happens, I am going to end up on the Shadow Council. If I have any hope of refusing to do their bidding once I’m part of their terror squad, I’ll need to know how to conceal my intentions from them.
If I can’t, it will have dire consequences for everyone, including Witches. ”
The man’s spine went rigid, and Erikson knew he was ruing the day he ever met Winter Celeste.
He kept his back to them for a full thirty seconds, his hand gripping the doorknob so tightly that his knuckles were white, before he spun around.
“Fine,” he bit out. “I find it near impossible that you don’t have any older, wiser Wickeds to mentor you, but if nothing else, you have displayed today how poorly structured and incompetent the Wickeds are. Come back at seven.”
“Why can’t?—”
He sighed. “I have many, many talents, but I am surprisingly not an expert in every class of magic. I know a specialist in shielding, but she lives out of state,” he added when it looked like Winter was going to protest, “so with no due respect, frig off until she can get here.”
“You have the worst attitude, Atlantes!” Winter shouted as he slammed the door, but when she turned to Erikson, she was grinning. “Even if I have to join the Shadow Council, I might still have a fighting chance to resist.”
She was a warrior through and through. Even certain she’d have to join the Shadow Council, she was still seeking ways to thwart their reign of terror.
Erikson’s already considerable admiration of her swelled.
There was something to be said for the bravery of those who continued to fight for what was right, even when it seemed like a lost cause.
His brother was one of those people. When Erikson and Connor were younger and seeing ghosts, they’d been too terrified to sleep or eat.
They’d become thin and wraith-like themselves, and their parents had been driven to their wits’ ends trying to find a medical diagnosis for what they had deemed a completely psychological problem.
Eventually, their family had moved from the haunted apartment, but the damage had already been done.
Their parents had given up on their marriage, and they’d given up on trying to understand the two, strange people they’d brought into the world.
Even now, Erikson’s relationship with them was strained.
His mother was remarried, but his father had slowly drifted into a fog of alcoholism.
Sometimes, when Erikson caught his father’s haggard eyes on him, he swore they were flat with resentment.
But all through the messy times and the down-right nasty times, he’d always had Connor.
When their mother went out every night to chase the high of a new date, or their father went to the bar and forgot he had children, Connor had been there for him.
His older brother had fought tooth and nail to keep him afloat.
He’d given him shit about his grades and stood up to his bullies.
He’d bruised Erikson’s jaw when he caught him at a party, an angry and bitter teenage boy, doing a line of cocaine to escape his shitty reality.
Through sheer grit, Connor had dragged him through adolescence and into the life he had today.
When they were in high school, they started the Grimm Reality YouTube channel together because they weren’t going to let other children like them drown under stigma and skepticism.
That had been a different kind of fight, and Erikson was proud to say they’d seen it through.
He couldn’t count how many people had reached out to him over the years and thanked him for normalizing the paranormal.
How many children had emailed saying they were too frightened to share what they saw with their parents, but how much better they felt knowing they weren’t alone.
Erikson had come across a lot of different personalities during his decade of filming, and he’d discovered that more people were like his parents than his brother.
When things got tough, they cut their losses and moved on, telling themselves it was waste of time.
Sometimes moving on was the right choice, but more often than not, folks simply didn’t have the grit it took to keep going in the face of adversity.
Winter Celeste lived in the same category as his brother.
She had more mettle than ninety percent of the people he’d met, and she would fight for those she loved until her last breath.
That knowledge stirred something deep within him, “the slumbering warrior” Connor had called it once when Erikson had surprised everyone by shedding his happy-go-lucky persona and beating down the hockey player who’d been hazing Connor.
Conner could have taken care of himself, but he’d been too cool and rational to respond.
Erikson hadn’t been.
Connor had never given up on Erikson, and that had earned him Erikson’s unwavering loyalty. Erikson might not have always been willing to fight for himself, but when he was provoked in defense of those he loved, he was a goddamned animal.
Somehow, without him even realizing it was happening, Winter had seized his admiration and wriggled her way into the small number of people he’d pledged his slumbering warrior to defending.
Whatever happened now, he wasn’t letting her go.
He didn’t care that the Shadow Council had power he couldn’t yet conceive of.
Winter didn’t belong to them. She belonged to a world of music and apple blossoms and sunlight.
Even if they took her, he’d never stop trying to get her back.
She’d earned his fealty, and now she’d have to deal with the consequences of having a tenacious, stubborn Grimm brother at her back.
“Let’s head to the mainland,” Erikson said, steering Winter toward the truck with one hand between her shoulder blades.
“And do what?” she asked once she’d slid inside the cab. “It’s already Thursday, and the Shadow Council’s deadline is in two days. We don’t have time to sit around our motel room watching TV while we wait for Atlantes’ contact to show up.”
“Who said anything about watching TV? We have work to do.”
Tentative hope entered her eyes. “You have an idea?”
“Yeah, I have an idea, and think you’re going to like it.”
Winter stared down at the pair of boxing gloves with disbelief. “ This is your idea? Erikson, I thought you were being serious.”
The local gym was dead mid-morning, with only the sounds of a couple treadmill motors and pounding feet to fill the silence.
He’d paid for visitor passes for the day, and now he and Winter had the entire aerobics room to themselves, along with free use of any equipment.
He’d been delighted to find a tub of sparring supplies in the closet, and had pulled out two pairs of ratty, duct-taped boxing gloves.
Winter continued to eye the faded gloves in her hands, her brows pinched together. Erikson tugged his on and winked at her. “Come on, don’t you want to get a few shots in?”
“Not particularly.” She grudgingly pulled them on. If she’d been someone else, she might have winced at using old, sweaty equipment, but this was Winter.
“Here’s the thing: we’re out of leads to pursue, which means all we’re left with are visions.
Since you can’t call them forth at will, we need to draw them out.
Me holding your hand like your grandfather isn’t working, so maybe if we do the thing we’ve likely been doing for centuries—fighting—it will trigger one. ”