Chapter Thirty-Seven
THIRTY-SEVEN
On Sunday morning, Ben was on his way to Gigi’s rally to help set up when Lilith ran in front of his car. He cursed, slamming on the brakes just in time to avoid running her over. She stood with her fists on her waist, expression worryingly determined.
He rolled down his window. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Resolving this situation in an appropriately dramatic way.” She pointed to the side of the road. “Pull over.”
He did, parking at the curb. When he got out, Lilith had a portal open.
Ben groaned. “Another portal? Where is this one going?”
“The demon plane, obviously.”
Ben pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, but where are we going after that? And why?”
“You’re going to make a proper grand gesture.”
That…was not an answer. “Where’s Kai?” Ben asked. He was used to having his friend as a buffer against Lilith’s special brand of insanity, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“It isn’t Kai’s grand gesture,” Lilith said. “Why would he come?”
“You keep talking about grand gestures.” He was familiar with the concept from rom-coms he’d watched with his parents, so it was clear this had something to do with winning Eleonore’s forgiveness, but he’d already made a grand gesture. “That’s what all the signs are for. So she’ll pause before running away and we can have a conversation about what happened.”
Lilith stepped closer and jabbed a finger into his chest. “You think talking about the misunderstanding is enough? That woman has been trapped by a curse for six hundred years. All talking does is make that servitude last even longer.” She nodded as if he’d agreed with her. “Yes, you have to do something.”
“I will,” he promised, “but we need to regroup and come up with a new strategy.” He and Eleonore would come up with a game plan, refine it until it was foolproof, then execute it.
For some reason Lilith grinned. “Good puppy. That’s exactly it.”
Then he was being yanked off his feet into the demon plane and, a moment later, into the woods outside Isobel’s cabin.
Ben stared at the red door with alarm. “Why am I back here? I don’t have any weapons and we need Eleonore—”
In response, Lilith reached into the pocket of her ragged black pirate trousers. She tossed a pair of handcuffs at him, which he fumbled to catch. “I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes.”
Then she was gone.
Ben looked at the handcuffs with consternation. The message was clear—trap Isobel. He would gladly do that, but how was he supposed to face down an immortal witch with centuries of knowledge and a willingness to kill?
He looked more closely at the steel, feeling slightly relieved at a rune that indicated the cuffs were spelled to prevent magic usage. Trapping a witch or warlock’s hands was essential to keeping their powers limited, since physical movement of some kind was required to cast. But how was he going to get close enough to catch her?
The red door creaked open.
“Shit,” Ben muttered, heart rate spiking. He shoved the handcuffs in his back pocket.
Isobel stepped out. She wore a teal gown this time, and there were shadows under her eyes. “Is Eleonore back?” she asked hopefully, clasping her hands at her chest.
He needed to think, damn it!
Isobel waited for his answer, eerie midnight eyes fixed on him. The cracked door revealed only the darkness of whatever lay beyond.
Ben had only one choice.
Time to be a werewolf of action.
“I want to talk to you about Eleonore,” Ben said, bracing himself for the most terrifying conversation of his life.
Isobel looked around the clearing. “She’s not here?”
“No.”
“All right,” Isobel said, shoulders drooping. She stepped back from the door. “Come in.”
Ben approached the invisible house warily, heart pounding. His palms were sweaty and his head buzzed with everything that could go wrong. Who was Ben to even think about confronting the witch? He didn’t have Eleonore’s martial skills. Didn’t know a thing about Isobel except that she was ruthless, unpredictable, and had a strange fondness for Eleonore that nevertheless allowed for murder attempts.
Was he supposed to club her over the head and drag her back to Glimmer Falls?
The slice of darkness beyond the door beckoned.
Ben ducked his head to fit under the lintel. He had a moment of disorientation as his eyes adjusted to being inside a building where previously one hadn’t seemed to exist. The cabin was stone with narrow windows, and the interior was lit by candles and a solitary fire. A cauldron bubbled at the hearth, surrounded by ornate furniture. At the back of the room a spiraling staircase indicated further rooms above. The only modern touch was a television on the far wall, on which an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was playing.
Isobel noticed him looking at the TV. “I always think about Eleonore when I watch it,” she said, taking a seat at a table that held a crystal ball. She leaned in to peer at the purple orb from an inch away, then flicked the exterior. “Ugh,” she said, sitting back with a huff. “These things are so vague.”
Ben shifted from foot to foot. “What, ah, are you scrying for? In the crystal ball?”
“Eleonore, of course.” She frowned at Ben. “Do you know where she is?”
“No,” he said honestly. “She left me behind.”
“As she left me.” Isobel sighed heavily, pressing a hand to her heart. “I know how that hurts.”
Ben bristled at that piece of absurdity, temper helping burn away some of the fear. “You tried to kill her.”
“Only temporarily.”
“Let me clarify,” he said, struggling not to shout. “You tried to kill her after you’d trapped her for six centuries, cursed to do your bidding.”
“We had fun!” Isobel blinked dark eyes up at him. After a long pause, her lower lip trembled. “Didn’t we?” she asked in a smaller voice.
Ben looked around the dim room, searching for signs of who this witch was. Who she loved, what she valued. Anything to figure out what was going on in her head and how to manage it.
Dried herbs hung from the ceiling and bookshelves sagged under the weight of hundreds of spell books. An antique writing desk held a pot of ink and a quill pen. Other than the TV, it was as if she’d been frozen in time centuries ago.
The desk also held a small picture, he realized. He approached it, then picked up the silver frame, which was tarnished with age. The painting showed a black-cloaked figure with their arm looped around Eleonore’s shoulders.
Isobel had commissioned a portrait of herself with her personal assassin. In the portrait Eleonore was grinning, but it didn’t resemble her real grin. There was no dimple in the right cheek, no tilt of the lips to bring character to the perfection of her face.
Isobel had wanted Eleonore to look happy in this picture, but she’d never actually seen her smile.
Ben’s chest hurt thinking of Eleonore spending so long in misery and anger. Every time she woke from her cursed sleep, the world had changed. Isobel had been her only touchstone, the only constant in a blurred, unhappy life.
Now he wondered if perhaps Eleonore had been Isobel’s only touchstone, too.
“She looks so lovely in that, doesn’t she?” Isobel asked from the table. “Bring it over.”
Ben obeyed, though his brain was turning over possibilities faster than it ever had before. He sat across from Isobel, setting the portrait next to the crystal ball. Then he hid his hands in his lap to disguise the white-knuckled clenching of his fingers. It was taking everything he had to be polite to this monster.
“You care about Eleonore,” he said, though it made him sick to say those words.
“I do.” Isobel touched a finger to the portrait, tracing her own hooded, concealed form. “I wish this showed my true looks, but Eleonore isn’t the only person who promised to memorize my appearance and then, someday, when I least expected it, return and cut my face off.” She chuckled. “Eleonore didn’t mean it, of course—at least not more than two-thirds of the time. She’s always been so delightfully dramatic.”
Ben didn’t understand how the witch could find amusement in that dynamic. He didn’t know how she could find caring in it. It was sick, the product of an ancient mind that had taken its own delusions as fact.
But he didn’t have to understand the thought process. The point was that Isobel believed it.
“Do you have any friends, Isobel?” he asked. When she pointed at the portrait, he shook his head. “Not counting Eleonore.”
Isobel’s eyes went distant, and she was silent for long moments. “The warlock Alzapraz and I talk sometimes,” she finally said. Then her forehead furrowed. “When was the last time he visited? He’d just come off that Spanish galleon…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll make more friends now that I’m immortal and don’t have to hide to protect myself.”
It was as he’d suspected. Isobel was so paranoid, she’d eliminated anyone she feared was an enemy. Or rather, she’d had Eleonore eliminate them. The last time she’d met Alzapraz in person the Spanish navy still used galleons, and her limited encounters with humans had involved murdering them to steal their lives. Eleonore had been her one companion over the centuries, and somehow this twisted woman had convinced herself their dynamic was something other than what it was.
She’d chosen to ignore the fact that Eleonore stayed with Isobel because she was forced to. She’d told herself Eleonore’s threats were a fun game they played. She’d decided they were friends .
Ben wasn’t a man prone to hate, but he hated Isobel with all his heart. She had hurt the woman he loved. For the first time, though, he realized she wasn’t an all-powerful, remorseless supervillain. She was cruel, deranged…and pathetic.
He would never feel sorry for her. She deserved whatever fate she got, and next time he wouldn’t utter a peep if Eleonore decided to behead her.
But now he understood Isobel’s weakness.
She was lonely.
“Why did you sell the crystal on eBay?” he asked.
Isobel looked pensive as she stroked Eleonore’s cheek in the portrait. “I thought I didn’t need it anymore. I’d been immortal for nearly two years at that point, and I’d never felt stronger. I fantasized about striking out on my own, traveling the world and making my enemies tremble at my feet without needing to rely on an assassin.” She shook her head. “Also, I had drunk a lot of vodka the night I put that listing up. It was an impulsive choice, one I immediately regretted.”
“Do you miss her?” Ben was barely able to keep his voice steady. Even pretending to entertain this woman’s delusions was sickening.
Isobel looked at him wordlessly with those dark, fathomless eyes, and he read the answer in them.
Here was his opportunity. Threatening Isobel’s life had never been the play—she would protect her existence above all, no matter who she had to destroy. No matter if she thought she cared about that person.
No, Ben needed to offer her something she wasn’t used to trading in.
Hope.
“I’ve grown tired of the responsibility of owning the crystal,” he said, praying his mediocre acting skills would be up to this, the most important task of his life. He reached into his pocket for the blue plastic crystal and set it on the table. “You can have it back for five dollars, but we’ll need a signed contract.”
Isobel’s face lit up as she looked at the crystal. “Would you take a gold doubloon?”
Ben had no idea what a doubloon was worth, but he pretended to consider as he slowly pulled the handcuffs out of his back pocket. “Yes,” he said. “That would be acceptable.”
Isobel was on her feet in an instant, hurrying toward a small box on the fireplace mantel.
Ben didn’t let her get that far. He lunged after her, grabbing her arms behind her back so she couldn’t cast a spell. It took a few scrabbling, screeching moments to get one of the cuffs snapped around her wrist, but the second was easier.
“Curse your eyes!” she spat. “A hex of boils upon your cock! Release me this instant!”
Ben had never been so happy to be a big, strong man in his life. “No,” he said, bending down to hoist her over his shoulder.
He tucked the crystal back into his pocket, then carried Isobel out of the cabin screaming.
Lilith stood in the middle of the clearing, arms crossed. At the sight of the thrashing witch, she smiled wickedly. “I knew you had it in you, wolf.” Then she whipped the green sash from her waist and shoved it in Isobel’s mouth, muffling her shouts. “Never fuck with redheads.”
Ben grinned, feeling a surge of exhilaration. “Let’s find Eleonore.”
He wasn’t sure what would happen next—they’d still need Isobel to break the spell—but a witch in hand was better than one in an invisible cabin in the woods.
“You were right,” he told Lilith as she opened a new portal. “This is a much better grand gesture.”