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CHAPTER TWELVE To the Max

I was getting my pups settled for the night when I heard deep voices coming from the kitchen.

So much for getting the dogs ready for bed.

They were off and away, scrabbling to gain purchase on wood floors so they could either greet or gut whoever was up and about in the wee hours of the sun’s renewed cycle toward summer.

I followed, tying the sash of my robe as I went.

Keir was petting Frey while her brother tried to comfort Kagan.

“Sleep in the cottage,” Keir told him. “I’ll come for you if we hear anything.”

“Anything.” Kagan was trying to extort a promise.

“Anything,” Keir reassured him. Four pairs of eyes turned toward me when I entered the kitchen: two sephalia and two fraighound. “Sorry to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep.” I yawned. “But I could be. Soon.”

Kagan’s responding sigh made me feel guilty about admitting that I could sleep. I knew he wouldn’t get a wink until Esme’s place in the world was restored.

I’d never run a marathon, or so much as around the block as an adult, but I could imagine I was that tired. Bone tired. Too tired to sleep. No matter how much I wanted it.

When Keir slid into bed, I scooted into the place in his arms that had been made just for me.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“It’s crazy. I’m exhausted, but I can’t stop wondering about Esme. And Kagan made me feel guilty about sleeping.”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

I willed myself to stop talking, knowing that Keir deserved to sleep even if I couldn’t.

The only encouragement he needed was my silence and, in a couple of minutes, his breathing was long and steady.

The darkness seemed to be full of noise.

There was Keir, the dogs’ soft snoring, but something else.

Something indefinable. I tried to reach out to Esme with my mind, just to let her know I was thinking about her.

“NOOOOOO!!!” Basically, the only part of Esme that responded to mental commands was her voice.

The rest of her body was useless. Paralyzed.

She didn’t care who might launch accusations of vanity.

The fear she felt at the prospect of having her head shaved was every bit as potent as the fear of death.

“It’s my hair. You can’t take it without my permission! ”

Actually, she’d learned the hard way that the Cardinals could do whatever they wanted to her. She had no cards. No leverage. Nothing of value to offer.

Except…

She steadied her tone and infused it with all the sincerity of her soul, imagining a day when she would have to face Kagan without hair.

It was salon torture and not to be tolerated by any standard of how magic kind are supposed to treat one another.

She was thinking about the possibility of suing, but that thought was quickly followed by a reminder of the magistrate’s exaggerated view of right and wrong.

She was thinking that I would probably rule in favor of the bald sisterhood to be triply certain she wasn’t accused of bias.

She was directing her body to twist and avoid the shears, but it was useless.

She was caught in some kind of weird physical stasis.

So, she played the only card she had. “If you shave my head, I will never work for you.”

The clippers went silent, leaving Esme to wonder what, exactly, had just happened. Did that work? She almost shouted with relief at the reprieve, however short or long it might be. Her captors looked at each other, clearly uncertain as to how to proceed.

Finally, the one holding the clippers spoke. “You refuse the honor of our sisterhood?” She said it as if nothing more unthinkable might be imagined.

“I do. I do. I really do. I do conclusively and absolutely, and I will not change my mind.” Esme didn’t know whether this strategy was a winning proposition, but it felt like a lifesaver had been thrown overboard as she was drowning.

The two left her sitting while they strolled away.

Their conversation was animated, possibly intense, but she couldn’t hear anything being said.

“If you wouldn’t mind returning control of my body? I’d very much like to scratch my nose?”

Both stopped and looked her way. With her verbal refusal of anything and everything they were offering, she’d finally garnered the attention she deserved.

After a brief blur and sensation of motion sickness, Esme had been left in a secure situation that might be described as an open-air cage.

She was standing on a platform in the clouds.

No ceiling. No walls, but the drop on all sides appeared to go on to infinity.

If she had been human, she would’ve gone mad with fear.

Since she wasn’t human, she simply sat down to await the next opportunity for protest, if not escape.

A touch of warmth washed over her as she imagined that I might be worrying about her.

Before I arrived in Hallow Hill, she’d had no real connection with others.

She’d more or less gone on living because she wasn’t brave enough to facilitate the alternative.

After so many long years with no one to care for and no one to care about her, it was nice to know there were two or three people who’d miss her. Myself. Evie. And now Kagan.

Esme felt a burning sensation behind her eyes.

At first, she wasn’t sure what it was because she hadn’t shed a tear since the day she’d been forced to watch her mother be burned alive.

Though she hadn’t made a formal pact with herself, her young soul decided it would be better to believe that people are evil than to be caught unaware.

It was a philosophy that seemed to serve her well.

Until me. She’d pushed me away as she had so many before, but unlike the others I was determined to be liked and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She vowed that, if… no, when she got home, she would be the best friend the magistrate ever had.

I was dozing, being lulled to sleep by the movement of Keir’s chest under my cheek, when my door chime began blasting “Maneater”.

I was on my feet beside the bed in two seconds.

Honestly, I’d thought I’d left my ability to move that fast behind a couple of decades ago.

That was my first reaction. My second reaction was to make a mental note to get the doorbell fixed.

At some point along the way, the house had caught onto my musical game and started making selections for me.

As can be imagined, that is a taste of what can go wrong when you equip a house with magical intelligence.

The house doesn’t know what songs will or won’t embarrass me, assuming the house cares about my feelings.

I’d like to think it does. Since I live here and all.

“I’ll get it,” Keir said, already halfway to the front door.

He didn’t bother to add more clothes to the drawstring pants he wore because he expected the wee hours caller to be none other than Maxfield Pteron.

It was Max. But Keir wasn’t first to get to the door. First were Fen and Frey. Of course, that meant that Keir wasn’t really trying.

Next was Kagan, who had to travel from the guest cottage at the rear of the property to our front door. Perhaps he’d been wide awake and looking out our living room window. Waiting.

As I tied my robe at the waist, I heard voices, but couldn’t make out what was being said.

Max stopped talking when I arrived on the scene.

“Come to the kitchen. I’ll start a kettle,” I said as I turned in that direction.

As the three men were being seated at the table, I said, “House.

Please light the kitchen fire.“ A fire much cheerier than we all felt sprang to life with a tiny explosion. “Max, start over, please. And don’t leave anything out.”

“Very well. The short of it is this. She is okay. The Board of Directors agree that this is an overreach for the Cardinals; that they don’t have the authority to randomly snatch people. Normally, that would be a benefit in name only because nothing where they’re concerned is enforceable.”

“But?”

“I was going to say ‘however’,” Max supplied.

“Fine. Speaker’s choice.”

“The bad news is that there was nothing random about the kidnapping. Esmerelda’s mother was a Cardinal who left and hid the pregnancy. As soon as her existence was reported, they came for her.”

“What’s the good news?” I asked.

“Well, it seems it didn’t take long for her to establish herself as a troublemaker.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from across the table where Kagan sat. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was thinking, which was, That’s my girl .

Max looked at Kagan. “Among the reasons Esmerelda is giving for demanding her return is a romantic interest. Would that be you?” Kagan nodded.

“They’re prepared to make an offer. If you accept and complete three trials to their satisfaction, they’ll let her go, even though they maintain that it’s a sacrifice.

I gather their intention was for her to fill the vacuum left by her mother’s departure. ”

“Max,” I said, “I feel skeptical about this. Just off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen ways they could devise to make that offer go sideways. There are probably many more if I work at it. And, based on what you’ve said, I can safely assume they’re smarter. Am I wrong to be skeptical?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Just because it’s unlikely that they’d play fair doesn’t mean they definitely won’t.”

“An eloquent dodge, Counselor. Slow clap.”

“Rita!” Keir’s tone told me I’d gone out of bounds with my belligerence.

“Sorry,” I said meekly.

Maxfield appeared entirely unperturbed. I suspected it would take a lot more than my sophomoric attempt at sarcasm to shake him up. “

“What’s your reservation?” he asked.

“The obvious.”

“Rita!!” Keir was even more insistent that I was being disrespectful to Max.

I blinked. Honestly, I hadn’t meant to be ungrateful to the very person who might be our saving grace. I blame my rudeness on the tension caused by seeing my good friend kidnapped right in front of me. If I’d known how much more the night had in store, I would’ve saved up.

“That the tests are rigged with failure as the only outcome. That the phrase ‘to their satisfaction’ is a loophole. Just for starters.”

He was shaking his head. “I can see why you’d be suspicious.”

“Because they’re criminals,” I said.

“Undoubtedly, they will not agree.”

“You think they believe disappearing a person without their consent is above board?”

He sighed. “Word on the street…” He smiled slightly at his use of modern lingo.

Whether he thought that made him clever or cool was anybody’s guess.

“… is that eons of never being questioned could lead a person or group of persons to believe they’re always right.

Reportedly, they govern themselves with a self-imposed code of integrity.

But granted, that report might be the result of good public relations.

How about this? If you want to be sure everything is accounted for contractually,” he smiled, “I know a lawyer.”

I smiled tentatively, feeling like we were getting somewhere. “A good one?”

He chuckled softly. “And another thing. If Esmerelda continues to make trouble, they may see her departure as less and less a sacrifice and more a blessing.”

“I feel confident vouching that Esme will continually remind them that they’ve borrowed trouble, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own hidden agenda.

If the proposition is on the up and up, or if you’re able to account for all variables in a contract, aside from getting Esme out of their hair, what do they stand to gain by testing Kagan? ”

“The answer is simple,” Max said. “All creatures love to be entertained.”

I couldn’t have hidden my surprise if I’d wanted to. “They want to be entertained at Kagan’s expense?”

Max was nodding. “Essentially. Yes.”

After a protracted pause, Keir leaned toward Kagan. “What do you think?”

Kagan had been mostly still. And quiet. He looked at Keir. “What do you think?”

His slight hesitation told me he was thinking carefully about how best to answer. “I might guess how you feel, but I can’t know. If it was Rita, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do,” Keir told him.

I knew that without needing it said. But hearing it still made my heart skip several beats in a row. My mind flashed on a shabby hotel room with a strange letter, a passport, and a plane ticket. Thank the gods I took a risk for once in my life and got on that plane!

Kagan turned to face Max. “Get the best deal you can, and that includes me comin’ with to get her.”

The kettle began to whistle just as Max was standing to leave. “I have some paper cups,” I offered. “If you’d like to take a tea to go?”

He laughed. Later Keir told me the joke was because of my naivete about the ways magic kind travel from one place to another. Not conducive to carrying hot liquid.

“I’ll get back to you as soon as…”

Max’s sentence was interrupted by Kagan. “Fast.”

“What?” Max asked.

“She should no’ stay any longer than necessary.

” Kagan’s delivery was forceful as if he thought he could make his thought true if it was powered by enough intensity.

His next words were so quiet I had to lean in.

“She’s causing trouble because she’s scared,” he said before swiping at his face with his forearm.

Oh, wow. He knows her. And he loves her.