Blackthorn

Chapter Fourteen

FOURTEEN

RONAN

Sunday dinner with my family is and has always been as fun as having shards of glass driven under my fingernails.

“More wine, sir?”

“Yes. And keep it coming.”

My voice is clipped, but the well-trained servant knows better than to react. He expertly fills my crystal goblet with my father’s favorite wine, a French Burgundy with the kind of impeccable pedigree he covets for his own lineage.

Unfortunately, class can’t be bought. The Crofts are wealthy, but our wealth was acquired the same way our ancestors, the robber barons of the nineteenth century, acquired it.

By unscrupulous means.

The servant steps back silently to lurk against the paneled dining room walls with the other servants, all of them uniformed and standing ramrod straight, gazing off into the distance over our heads.

This ostentatious display of domestic help is my stepmother’s doing. It’s a far cry from her humble beginnings in Detroit where she was working as a waitress in a diner when she met my father.

He was a new widower on a business trip at a pharmaceutical conference. She was fresh out of beauty school. According to them both, it was love at first sight.

It was definitely something at first sight, but I’m sure love had nothing to do with it.

Not that they’re a bad match. Two people as obsessed with money as they are can generally live long and happy lives together.

Unless the cash runs out. I’ve spent many enjoyable hours daydreaming about the chaos that would ensue if I did something subversive to tank the company stock.

Like marry Maven Blackthorn, for instance.

Not that she believes in marriage. A man is more likely to be flattened by an asteroid than get a Blackthorn to agree to be his wife.

But if by some miracle she did, I’d be cut off from my family. My father’s hatred of the Blackthorns borders on pathological.

Almost every day before I left for school when I was growing up, he’d warn me to stay away from Maven. He took a strange interest in singling her out from the rest of her kin as an object of particular scorn. I could never understand the obsession, but his lessons sunk in.

I can’t begrudge her mistrust of and anger toward me. I earned it.

Fingering the fat strand of Tahitian pearls around her neck as she stares at me, my stepmother is obviously irritated. “Ronan, stop scowling. You look homicidal.”

“Maybe I am.”

My father glances up from his beef bourguignon to give me a sharp look. When he sees no emotion on my face, he returns to eating, satisfied.

In this family, it’s acceptable if you kill someone. Just don’t get too worked up about it.

Silence reigns for long, painful minutes, until my father finishes his meal and picks up his wine. He isn’t supposed to drink alcohol because of the antibiotics he’s on for his bird-pecked eye, but doctor’s orders never stopped him from doing anything.

God himself could descend from the heavens on a flaming chariot and my father would tell him to fuck off and go play with his cherubs.

“I assume you heard May Blackthorn came home for her grandmother’s funeral.”

I’m surprised he took this long to broach the subject, but as it wasn’t a question, I don’t provide an answer. I stab a hunk of beef with my fork instead.

Undeterred by my silence, my father continues. “I saw her at the viewing at Anderson’s. Hardly recognized her. Pitch-black hair scraped back into a Viking’s braid and a face that could scare Frankenstein’s monster.”

I quell a frisson of rage before speaking. “She’s never been ugly.”

“No, she hasn’t. She’s still good-looking, like the rest of those crazy women. I meant her expression. If looks could kill, I’d already be six feet under.”

“Pity they can’t, then.”

“Ronan! Be nice to your father!”

“I’ll be nice to him as soon as he deserves it, Diana.”

“How many times have I told you to call me Mother?”

“Probably as many times as I’ve refused.”

My father snaps, “Stop it, both of you. And don’t raise your voice, Diana. It’s unbecoming.”

She’s not brave enough to stand up to him, so she sends me a hostile look instead.

It’s no match for the lethal glares Maven can conjure. Especially when she’s looking at me. I used to wonder if she practiced to get them just right.

My father impatiently waves the servant over to pour him more wine. When his goblet is full again, he drinks deeply from it before producing a loud and forceful belch.

“Elijah, really.”

Stepmonster dearest pretends to be offended, though I know she secretly enjoys it when he acts like a barnyard animal because it makes up for her own social faux pas, of which there are many.

To this day, she still pronounces Versace as “Versayse.” The satisfaction I feel when that happens in front of one of her society lady friends and they roll their eyes behind her back is profound.

It’s the little things that keep me going.

“What about Esme and Davina? How are they doing?”

My father scowls, as I knew he would at the mention of those names. “I didn’t ask after their health, now, did I?”

I chew on a velvety carrot, thinking of Maven’s stormy emerald eyes. Her daughter’s eyes are lighter and brighter, a green so vivid, it almost looks artificial. Though it was probably the camera’s filter setting.

Probably.

“No? Why not?”

“Don’t be dense, son, you know exactly why not. I only went to Lorinda’s viewing to get face time with the weird sisters because I knew they’d never let me past the front gate of their witches’ cottage.”

“Why did you want face time with them?”

My father looks at me as if he raised a dimwit. “Do you see this bandage on my eye or has your vision gone bad since you were last here for supper?”

I know all about the raven attack because I know all about everything that happens in this town, but that’s my business, not his. “What happened?”

“I’ve been hexed is what happened.”

A titter from across the table draws my attention. It’s my ten-year-old half brother, August, a sweet kid with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, a head too big for his body, and a sensitive nature his parents are sure to warp into pathology.

I call him Auggie because it makes Diana look as if she’s about to have an aneurysm. I’d almost forgotten he was sitting there.

Diana reaches over and pats his head as Dad continues.

“I demanded they withdraw it, but you know how those women are. Contrary as cats. You tell them to do something, and they’ll do the opposite from spite.”

“Maybe if you asked nicely, you’d get a different reaction.”

“And maybe if the sky rained gold coins, the world would be a better place, but here we are. August, sit up straight. You look like a gargoyle.”

“What’s a gargoyle?”

“A hideous thing you don’t want to be.”

Diana croons, “Like a Blackthorn, sweetheart. Do what your father says.”

I hold up my glass. The manservant fills it. I drain it again, fantasizing about kidnapping Maven and tying her to my bed.

What I’d like to do to her. All the filthy and wonderful things. Every time I see her, my dick gets hard and my teeth itch to sink into her skin. I wonder if she remembers how amazing the sex was between us or if she’s written it off as temporary insanity?

“Are you listening to me? Ronan, wake up!”

“Of course I’m listening. I’m riveted to your every word.”

Diana sighs. “Honestly, Elijah, how can you let him speak to you with such disrespect?”

“That wasn’t disrespect. It was sarcasm. You’ve heard of sarcasm, haven’t you, Diana? Or maybe not. Satirical wit isn’t really your thing.”

“Elijah! Are you going to let him be so rude?”

With his one good eye, he pins her with an icy death stare. “He’s not the one shrieking like a banshee.”

She twists her lips and her pearls and looks at her lap.

If that had been Maven Blackthorn my father had chastised, he’d already have a fork sticking out of his eyeball.

Picturing him screaming as blood spurts from his head, I smile. Then I think about Maven being engaged and frown again.

She had to be lying. Blackthorns don’t do marriage. As far as I can tell, they don’t do anything they don’t want to do.

I envy them that freedom. Even if the entire town fears and shuns them, at least they’re not living in a gilded cage, like I am.

The Croft name, the Croft wealth, the Croft position in society … all of it is suffocating. A pillow pressed onto my face since as far back as I can remember. Cutting off my air.

To be a Croft is to be cursed.

It’s really no surprise that self-destruction is so prevalent in our family tree. Life is far too long to be spent in misery.

I catch the tail end of whatever my father’s been droning on about.

“… at the Campbells’ place. Fire marshal says they can’t find a cause.

Suspicious timing, if you ask me. One day May returns out of the blue, and the next, their house burns to the ground?

It’s a miracle no one was hurt. I’ll never forget the day she cursed Becca.

Do you remember that, Ronan? Right there in front of everyone at the winter carnival.

‘I wish you were as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside!’” He chuckles. “Boy, did that one stick.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t have them arrested,” says a sulking Diana.

My father’s tone is regretful. “We’re a few centuries too late for that.”

“They shouldn’t be able to get away with whatever they want, throwing hexes around left and right and harassing people.”

“Just keep August away from them, Diana. They’re a bunch of man-hating psychopaths.”

“They don’t hate men. They hate being kept on a leash. Not all women can be bought.” I send a pointed look in my stepmother’s direction.

My father sighs. “Don’t wind her up, son.”

Rigid and seething, Diana throws her napkin on her plate and stands. “I don’t have to sit here and take this. August, come with me.”

August climbs off his chair and obediently takes the hand his mother holds out to him. “Bye, Ronan.”

“Bye, Auggie. See you soon, buddy.”

He smiles. “Okay.”

As soon as they’re out of the room, my father tells the manservant to leave the wine and get out. He chases the rest of the servants away by flapping his hands impatiently. When they’re all gone, he spends a few minutes grilling me about the state of the company.

This is a familiar dance. I know my part well. Though he no longer holds the reins, he still needs to feel as if he’s in touch with things. Valuable. I have a glimpse of myself in his position somewhere years in the future, asking my own son the same questions.

Those musings lead my mind down a road it’s trodden a thousand times before. Namely, my child with Maven.

The one she claims she miscarried.

Though the picture she produced of her daughter showed no signs of my family’s coloring or features, there was something in the way she looked at the camera that was startlingly familiar. Unsmiling, head turned slightly to the side, gaze guarded, as if she didn’t want her picture taken.

It’s the same expression I wear in every photo taken of me.

Which is why I need to find out everything I can about this ocular surgeon in Los Angeles Maven mentioned, Dr. Brett Lattman. I looked him up online, of course, and stared at the headshot on his practice’s website for far too long.

Bea isn’t his. I’m sure of it. And if she’s mine … there’s only one thing left to do.

As my father likes to say, loose ends need tying.

“How’s the new serum working? Any progress?”

I drag my attention back to the present. “It’s better than its predecessors, but still not effective. And it’s still incredibly expensive to produce.”

He grunts. “You know the cost doesn’t matter.”

“The ingredients aren’t exactly easy to obtain, either.”

“Don’t give me excuses, son. We’ve been chasing a cure for generations. It’s the whole reason the damn business was started in the first place. But you’re close, I can feel it.”

“Is Auggie showing any signs yet?”

He shakes his head.

The disease only affects the males of the Croft family tree. As it usually strikes around the transition to adulthood, Auggie has time yet, but not much.

We need to find a cure before it’s too late for him.

“And you still haven’t told Diana?”

Instead of immediately responding, my father gazes into his glass of Burgundy, the color as rich and dark as dried blood. “No,” he says after a long while, his voice low. “It would break her.”

Like it broke my mother.

She hanged herself when I was only thirteen.

I blame her death on him completely. He could have done so many things to prevent that outcome, but he chose to do nothing. No plans. No precautions. Not even the simplest safeguard. It was reckless.

Because as every scientist knows, nature abhors a vacuum. Every void will be filled.

In our case, by monsters.

I rake a hand through my hair and guzzle the remains of the Burgundy in my glass, then push my chair back and stand. “I’ve got to get going.”

My father nods, not looking up at me. I walk around the end of the dining table and am just about to leave the room when he calls my name.

I stop, turn, and look at him.

“Be careful, son. And stay away from May Blackthorn. That girl is dangerous.”

“Just out of curiosity, is there something you’re not telling me about her?”

Startled, he looks up from his wine. “What?”

“You’ve always made a special point to tell me to stay away from Maven. Her specifically, not the rest of the family. Do you know something I don’t?”

“No,” he snaps, turning back to his wine and ending the conversation.

I study him for a moment, unconvinced. But I know I won’t get more, so I simply head out into the night to walk under the clearing thunderclouds and the ghostly pallor of the waxing moon.

Perched on the bare branches of a maple tree in the yard, a flock of ravens watches me go.