Page 8

8

E velyn followed Valen back the way they’d come, their return trip slower due to late rush hour traffic and the never-ending road construction that plagued sections of New Orleans year-round. They passed the Super 8 where she had waited for him after getting separated in City Park. They entered the residential neighborhood of Gentilly Terrace, one of the areas that had been hit the hardest by a historic hurricane years before. Due to the destruction and the subsequent rebuilding that happened, the houses in this part of Gentilly, and in the Ninth Ward to the south, were mostly newer compared to other areas of the city. For someone who specialized in magical security, it was an interesting choice. New houses were a double-edged sword when it came to controlling access to any unwanted visitors.

Just as the sun began dipping behind the trees, Valen pulled into a driveway. The house was a modest, two-story cottage with sea-foam green bricks and four thin white pillars holding up the covered porch. Three dormer windows extended from the sloped, dark gray roof. It looked charming and peaceful. And very unlike Valen.

He drove around to the back and parked his bike in a detached garage set several yards away from the house. Evelyn followed suit, then stood back while he closed the garage door.

“Let’s get you inside.” He led the way across the lawn and in through the back door. Neat rows of herbs grew in raised planters on the porch, protected from the intense sun by a canvas awning that looked like a more recent addition. Evelyn recognized mugwort and narrowed her eyes. Interesting.

The inside of the cottage smelled like sandalwood and vanilla shot through with the slightly stale smell of old coffee grounds. His decorating style was a further surprise. The hardwood floors, worn leather couches, and plentiful bookshelves made the space feel lived-in, but it was clean and uncluttered—like he wasn’t here much. With the demands of working for someone like Denmark, he probably wasn’t. He led her through a well-appointed kitchen with dark cherry cabinets and black marble counters and up a narrow set of stairs to the second floor, which featured a short hallway with three doors. He pointed to the one on the far left.

“That’s the guest bedroom. Middle door is the bathroom.” He pointed to the door on the right. “That one’s me. There are clean towels in the cupboard in the bathroom. Help yourself to a shower and anything else you need. I’m going to go touch base with Denmark. I’ll pick up food on my way back.”

Evelyn gripped the banister tightly at the mention of Denmark. “What will you tell him?”

“I’m not sure yet. Not the truth.” Valen rubbed the back of his neck. He was really in this with her now. Unless he turned her in to Denmark right this minute, he was in deep shit.

“Are you sure? Seems to me that turning me in is the only way you get out of this unscathed.”

His grin was lopsided and devastating. “I don’t mind a little scathing now and then.” He looked tired and there were bruises on his knuckles, an abrasion above his left eye near the hairline. His bottom lip was cut, nearly split. She wondered briefly what the sniffers looked like—if they were still alive.

“That’s the thing. It won’t be a little anything.”

He reached out and placed one heavy hand on her shoulder. “I know. And I’m choosing to be here.”

The gesture caught her off guard, and she felt betrayed by the tears that sprang into her eyes in response. She nodded, not trusting her voice not to betray her too.

“The warding here is stronger than what I utilize at Denmark’s estate.” He dropped his hand from her shoulder, and she shivered, missing its warmth. “You’ll be safe.” He set his pack with the iron box in it on the floor at the top of the stairs. “And so will this, at least for a while. You like Vietnamese food?”

“I love Vietnamese food.”

“Good. I know a place.”

She watched him jog down the stairs, then listened to the rumble of his motorcycle as it roared to life before slowly fading into the distance.

It felt weird to be alone in his house. It felt weird to be in his house at all. She dragged his heavy pack into the guest bedroom. The room was small but cozy. Most of the space was taken up by a huge four-poster bed and a small side table. A corner bookcase and a worn floor rug tied it all together. Way better than the futon she’d been expecting.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered. She put the iron box in the closet because it just felt better to have it close but out of sight. She chose not to examine why that would be. She set the now-empty pack by Valen’s bedroom door. The temptation to sneak a peek at his private space was intense, but she resisted. For now.

Evelyn sat on the edge of the bed in the guest bedroom for an uncertain amount of time. Logically, she knew she was in a safe place, yet the danger hadn’t really passed. The longer she remained in the city, the worse it would become. She couldn’t hide out in Valen’s man cave indefinitely. She raked her fingers through her mess of dark wavy hair. Her body ached from the second tumble she’d taken off her bike in as many days. Road rash down on her left leg and arm itched and burned. She still smelled vaguely of sulfur from her desperate attempt at cleansing… was that really just last night?

She felt numb. The emotions were there—she’d nearly lost her composure when Valen put his hand on her shoulder—but she couldn’t access them. She was shut off from herself, and that’s a very dangerous thing for a witch. There was no one to call. No one to reach out to, not with Granny Lucy gone into hiding and her great-grandmother no longer living. A deep ache cut through the numb at the thought of her great-grandmother. She would have known what to do. She knew so much, saw so much, despite—or perhaps because of—her blindness later in life. Evelyn wrapped her fingers around her great-grandmother’s moonstone amulet and willed the tears to come. She needed to feel. Numb was a slippery slope. She’d learned that the hard way when her Nana died.

Evelyn forced herself off the bed. She couldn’t do anything about the book right now. She had to focus on taking care of her own needs so that she’d be ready to face whatever came next. She needed a hot shower, a warm meal, and a long sleep. She would sort the rest out later.

When Evelyn emerged from the shower a half hour later, the house remained quiet and empty. No Valen. She checked her phone to see if she’d missed a text. Nada. She decided to quell the rising panic in her chest by indulging her curiosity about his home. She wrapped herself in Valen’s robe and padded barefoot down the stairs. He must have turned lights on before he left because cozy lamplight chased away the darkness in the living room and more lights beckoned from the kitchen.

She made her way slowly through the room, running her hand along the buttery leather of the sofa as she passed, trailing her fingers along the spines of the books on the shelves in the hallway that led through to the breakfast nook. A few of the books had a modest amount of shine—nothing intentional, mind you—just the sort of ordinary magic that was infused into objects that were known and loved over a lifetime or two. These were heirlooms, but whose?

There was a note on the kitchen counter.

Evelyn,

I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll only stay long enough to avoid suspicion. Denmark is wary of everyone right now, including me. I’ll bring food back but help yourself to anything you can find in the meantime.

Please don’t leave.

Valen

The tears threatened again. He was putting himself at risk to help her, and for what? Meanness she could handle. But kindness? It cut straight to her core.

She pulled open the fridge door to find absolutely nothing of substance. Their refrigerators could be twins. A few beers awaited their turn on the bottom shelf. Butter, a few loose cheese sticks, and a half-empty carton of milk rounded out his supplies. Evelyn took one of the cheddar sticks—snacking cheese, her great-grandmother had called it—and chose an apple from a fruit basket on the counter. She found an old-fashioned tea kettle in one of the cabinets and filled it with filtered water before setting it on the stove and turning up the heat.

Between bites of apple and nibbles of cheese, she perused the rest of his cabinets looking for tea. She had her emergency stash upstairs, but she didn’t want to dip into it yet if at all possible. She finally found an almost-but-not-quite expired box of Earl Grey. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. It would have to do. Once the kettle boiled, she took her mug of tea and what was left of her apple over to the kitchen table. One thing that was still bothering her was the sheer scope of the barrier she’d run into at the bridge. She’d had no idea such a thing was even possible. To seal off an entire area like that? Did it cover the entire city? The shimmering wall had extended as far as she could see in all directions, but maybe they’d only blocked the main exit points. Whoever “they” were.

Evelyn used her phone to pull up a map of New Orleans. It might mean going well out of her way, but if she could find a lesser-known path out of town—maybe even go off road—she might be able to slip through the net, so to speak.

The deep rumble of Valen’s motorcycle announced his return. She checked the time. It was nearly ten o’clock. He’d been gone for over three hours. Had it taken that long to smooth things over with Denmark?

Valen froze when he saw her, his hands full of groceries and a bulging takeout bag. His eyes darkened with a hunger that wouldn’t be satisfied by pho and a few spring rolls, and heat burned low in her belly in response. She forced herself to take a sip of tea. It tasted dusty, and she choked, breaking the spell between them. He set the bags on the counter and stalked over to grab her mug of tea. He sniffed it, then grimaced.

“Don’t drink this. It’s gone bad.”

Evelyn crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, I know that now. ”

He went over to the bags of groceries and dug through one of the bags, then tossed something at her. “Here.”

Evelyn caught it, then examined the small tin. It was strawberry rose black tea, one of her favorites. She looked up at him quizzically.

“I thought I recognized the label. From your kitchen.” He avoided looking at her, focusing on putting the groceries away instead. “I got some bagels and orange juice—do you like orange juice?—I’m not here much so the cupboards are pretty bare.” Once everything was put away, he brought the takeout bag over to the kitchen table and handed Evelyn a bottle of beer. “To take the edge off.”

She didn’t argue. Watching him move around the kitchen had revealed yet another side to him. He was athletic, she realized. Almost graceful. She’d been so distracted by his sheer size before that she’d never really paid attention to the way he carried himself. She’d written him off as a sort of dumb jock who grew into a glorified security guard for a pompous rich dude. She stood by that perception of Denmark, but she was unsettled by how potentially wrong she’d been about Valen. His home, his thoughtfulness in looking out for her, his quick thinking when the sniffers had attacked them in City Park—clearly she’d underestimated him.

“Thanks,” she said, realizing she’d never responded when he’d handed her the drink.

“Hungry?”

“Starving.” His eyes flicked down to the collar of his robe she was wearing, and she smiled innocently. “Oh, can I borrow your robe? I didn’t bring pajamas.”

He growled something that resembled a yes and started unpacking the food. He handed her a container of shrimp spring rolls with hoisin peanut sauce, a bowl of pho with tender slices of medium rare beef, and a wax bag of deep-fried pork wontons.

Evelyn’s stomach growled painfully, and he glanced her direction. There was no way he heard that… right?

They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. After her second bite of the perfectly salty pork wonton, Evelyn set down her beer. Her hunger had quieted enough for her curiosity to rise. “How did it go with Denmark?”

Valen grunted around a big bite of spring roll. “He’s still convinced he has the real book, and he’s extremely paranoid that someone is going to come take it from him.”

Evelyn helped herself to another wonton. The golden triangles were filled with seasoned ground pork and shrimp. She dipped it the sweet chili sauce. “What reason did you give him for why you weren’t there today?”

Valen drained the last of his beer and got up to get another one. “I told him I was being proactive about his security, scoping out the city, making sure nothing was brewing that we didn’t know about.”

That was smart. “Did he believe you?”

He set another bottle next to her food. “I think so. After I left, I drove out to the city limits in a few places, testing for magic.”

“Testing? How?”

He reached into his pocket and set a palm-sized stone on the table with a soft clack. It looked like a chunk of clear quartz. “It glows when it comes into contact with magic. I use it to test wards and to make sure no one sneaks magical objects onto Denmark’s estate without declaring them first.”

“Can I hold it?”

He grunted again and took another bite of spring roll with a beer chaser. Evelyn picked up the raw crystal and balanced it on her palm. There was a tiny bit of shine glimmering deep in the core. She pulled her great-grandmother’s amulet out from beneath the robe and held it close to the crystal. The clear quartz flamed to life, its depths suddenly a bright red—her great-grandmother’s favorite color.

“It doesn’t have much of a range on it, but it works.”

Satisfied, Evelyn set it back on the table. “And what did you find? Is there a gap in the barrier?”

“Not that I could find. Every place I tested yielded the same result—a dark purple swirling color, almost black.”

“What do the colors mean?”

“No idea,” he said with a shrug. “It didn’t come with instructions.”

They said goodnight a few minutes later, Evelyn retreating to the guest bedroom and Valen heading for the shower. She lay in the darkness and listened to the water running, comforted by the sounds of another person in the house. Her eyes burned with a need for sleep. It felt wrong somehow to be so comfortable when there was still so much danger all around her. When the most powerful dark shine she’d ever seen lurked in an iron prison only a few feet away.

The water stopped and was replaced by the quiet hum of an electric toothbrush. Dental hygiene, the sexiest habit. She rolled onto her side and faced the door. She’d left it cracked to let the light from the hallway seep into the room and chase some of the shadows away. The humming stopped. There was a brief silence, then the toilet flushed, followed by the bathroom door opening. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight when he stepped out into the hallway. His shadow fell across the narrow opening into the guest bedroom, and she closed her eyes, feigning sleep. He whispered a few words, ones she recognized from when she was a little girl. A sleep blessing.

Hot tears slipped out from beneath her eyelids as his footsteps moved away. The door to his bedroom opened and closed. Finally overcome, Evelyn buried her face in the pillow and cried herself to sleep.