3. Chapter 3
3
O f all the possible realities Rebecca Bloodshadow might have faced, none of them included this moment.
Until now.
She couldn’t believe she had actually agreed to do this, here, in a mildewing temp building in the woods in the middle of nowhere. With both Maxwell Hannigan and Rowan Blackmoon in the same room together. Both of them somehow still alive and unharmed. Both of them waiting for her and for whatever came next.
Rebecca had no idea what to expect, only that every cell in her body revolted against the idea of what she was about to do.
For the first time since the day she’d fled from Agn’a Tha’ros for a lifetime of running and never looking back—several lifetimes, in fact—she would soon be speaking to not only one familiar face from her past, but several.
She’d be looking them in the eye. Listening to their words. Revealing her presence in this world after centuries of keeping it a secret.
And, in all likelihood, she would also be responding to all their expected pleas, enticements, and possible threats with an unyielding decision of her own that would only further fuel the fire.
Assuming, of course, that she and Rowan ever even got that far.
There was always a chance they wouldn’t. That something would go terribly wrong before they achieved this lofty goal of opening communications back home.
It didn’t help that this whole thing was Rowan’s idea. And even now, as she sat across the crooked desk, staring down the Blackmoon Elf as he regarded her in turn with equal measures of surprise and suspicion, the last thing she wanted was to work with him as an ally, let alone perform with him the kind of ritual spell his incredibly risky compromise would require.
Even when the light of the conjured orbs floating above them reflected in Rowan’s hazel eyes, glinting back at her with all the mischief and danger she now resented after discovering his most recent betrayal, the mere thought of being any physically closer to him than this made her nauseous.
But this was the only way to get her and the Shade teams out of this dangerously sticky pickle in which they’d found themselves tonight beside the abandoned Polly L Bridge outside downtown Chicago.
Her only choice if the Roth-Da’al wanted her operatives to make it out of this alive.
To keep them safe, Rebecca had broken the most critical promise she’d made herself centuries ago. She had just agreed to Rowan’s terms and his ensuing proposal.
It felt like they stared at each other forever until the Blackmoon Elf’s surprise morphed into his usual condescending amusement directed once again toward her.
Then he slapped the desk with an open hand, making the whole thing wobble on its unsteady base and the stack of cinder blocks where one of its legs used to be, and grinned. “Excellent. I’ve got everything we need right here. It’ll only take a moment.”
The tilting office chair squeaked and shuddered across the tiny office’s slanted floor—layered in the dust and dirt and the dry leaves of long-term abandonment—when Rowan shoved himself away from the desk before leaping to his feet.
He paused briefly to eye Rebecca with poorly concealed triumph before shooting her an an infuriating wink. “You just hang tight.”
With that, he marched across the dilapidated temp building toward the far end, as if they’d held this meeting in an opulent study instead of a cramped trailer, barely large enough for all three of them, left behind to rot in the middle of the woods.
The second he turned his back to her, Rebecca leapt out of her own chair like someone had lit a fire beneath it and whirled around to stalk toward the door.
She didn’t get far.
Maxwell stood mere feet behind her chair, as he had since Rebecca and Rowan first sat down for this revelatory little tete-a-tete that had turned Rebecca’s entire world upside down in a matter of minutes. The shifter’s silver eyes followed her intently even when he dipped his head to watch her aggravated approach.
The electrifying connection between her and her shifter Head of Security—turned something more by now—filled Rebecca with an overwhelming urge to throw herself at Maxwell. Bury her face in his chest. Breathe in the overwhelming scent of moonlight and dew-studded grass and sandalwood with her eyes shut. Disappear while his arms wrapped around her.
But she swallowed the urge, tucked it away deep down inside herself, and paced beside him instead.
She needed every ounce of focus and willpower for what came next. Every last bit of self-control and level-headedness, for whatever they were worth at this point.
The trailer was so small, it only left room for three urgent paces beside the shifter before she was forced to spin around and take another four toward him again.
The trailer filled with chaotic clattering and clunking, the occasional flash of shadowy black un-light with a burst or two of gray and silver from the opposite side of the room.
Rowan made all that noise on purpose, just to mess with her head. She knew it.
Before Rebecca would have spun around again to keep pacing in such a laughably small space—if it didn’t already feel more like another prison closing in around her—the tantalizingly dark energy of her and Maxwell’s connection, whatever it was, bloomed with renewed force in her chest, drawing them ever closer.
She wanted to run from him, from Rowan, from all of it, but she’d made her decision. Blue Hells take her if she didn’t stand by it now with every last ounce of dignity she could still summon at a time like this.
But she didn’t turn away from Maxwell again. Instead, she spun only enough to stop and stand beside him, running a hand through her blonde hair and puffing out a sigh through loose lips. Then the deliciously burning heat of Maxwell’s silver gaze on her face lessened.
She didn’t have to look at him to know he’d returned his cautiously suspicious gaze onto Rowan, who bumbled around in what looked like a pile of trash at the far end of the trailer.
A low, rumbling growl rose from the shifter to reverberate through Rebecca’s chest as well. “What, exactly, are we about to begin?”
“Our only option for getting out of this alive,” she murmured, terrified of losing herself completely if she gave in to how badly she wanted to look at him. “And getting everyone else back home in one piece.”
“Something tells me it isn’t worth it. But if the Roth-Da’al deems it necessary…” The burning heat on the side of her cheek returned when his silver eyes settled on her face again. “I will stand with you until it’s finished.”
No longer capable of resisting, she looked up into those dark, glimmering eyes softly pulsing with a lighter silver glow and whispered, “And what if I told you this is just the beginning?”
His expression softened in an instant, his gaze burrowing into her. “To me, they are the same.”
Another startling clatter of junk across the room shattered the moment before Rowan clomped around in a clumsily noisy circle, clicking his tongue. “I knew this would happen. Didn’t turn out exactly the way I thought it would, but at least I came prepared. Now where in the Blue Hells did I put it?”
Dry leaves and drier sheets of paper, worn thin and stained with age and weather, fluttered around his feet as he spun back and forth, scouring every inch of the trailer floor like a drunkard searching urgently for a misplaced set of keys.
Yeah, he was definitely doing this on purpose. Creating a crisis to keep the focus on him so his guests—his captives now, really—would be too distracted by his seeming ineptitude to plot against him.
“Oh!” With a carefree chuckle, Rowan whirled around and marched toward them instead, his cocky grin unflinching even as he slipped directly between Maxwell and Rebecca on his way to another pile of discarded junk in the corner of the trailer beside the lopsided door. “Guess I’m just a little excited. Almost there.”
Maxwell growled at the elf’s passing, bristling and turning slowly as Rowan passed to keep an eye on the Blackmoon Elf at all times.
A simmering heat of condescension and disdain roiled in Rebecca’s belly, up through her chest and throat, and into her head before it settled in a deep, painful pocket behind her eyes. She recognized the feeling, despite instantly knowing this was Maxwell’s reaction churning up inside her as well.
At the moment, they shared the same response to Rowan’s coy trickery and masterful deceit.
It wasn’t unique to their current situation, but this time, the shifter didn’t try to get physical with the Blackmoon Elf he despised so much—and with good reason, now more than ever.
This time, Maxwell remained at Rebecca’s side, watching and assessing without losing an ounce of his own self-control the way he once had.
Because he knew now that he and Rebecca were on the same side, that they both stood against the Blackmoon Elf who’d caused them so much trouble since the day he first appeared.
And that Rowan couldn’t possibly hope to come between them.
That had to be the reason, though right now, pinpointing the exact cause of subtle changes like this in her Head of Security wasn’t remotely at the top of Rebecca’s to-do list.
She couldn’t look at Rowan, even when another flash of magical un-light strobed across the trailer before he shouldered his way between her and Maxwell once more for another march across the cramped space.
“Almost there,” Rowan called cheerily, his arms now laden with random objects and a handful of straw fluttering to the floor in a haphazard trail behind him.
Yeah, that was all he had to offer.
With another flash of his magic’s black un-light that nearly filled the trailer to the brim with a darkness like the deepest and thickest of shadows before fading again beneath the glow of the floating orbs, Rowan stepped back from the side of the desk and spread his arms, his face alight with a triumphant grin. “And here we are!”
He clapped his hands together in excitement, then reached them both toward the thick canvas sheet draped over a large, indecipherable shape now suddenly propped up against the side of the crooked desk. Another muffled rustling of the thick canvas followed when he pulled the sheet away with a flourish and tossed it instantly to the side.
A cloud of dust and leaves spiraled into the air beneath the abandoned covering, but Rebecca’s focus had already been diverted toward the item he’d just revealed.
A large, heavy oval mirror now rested against the side of the desk, propped up at an unsteadily narrow angle. The piece stood five feet tall, its highest point rising above the surface of the desk, though several inches of that height came from the intricately carved wooden frame three inches wide around the mirror. Another three inches of solid wooden thickness added to the antique mirror’s sturdy weight.
Dust, dents, and long, thin gouges dotted the frame, the mirror’s otherwise pristine surface speckled with stains of age and the occasional chip where the glass had broken free from its setting. Even if it hadn’t looked as ancient as the old-world gods, the lifespan of this particular mirror—all the things it had seen and all the reflections of truth and secrets it had tucked away in its physical memory—filled the air with a palpable heaviness.
Rebecca had never seen it before, but this was no ordinary mirror, of that she was certain. Then Rowan’s pitiful ruse revealed itself.
He’d conjured this mirror from whatever secret dimension in which he’d been storing it. The piece certainly hadn’t been here against the desk, covered in a canvas tarp, the whole time. It was all for show.
Dusting off his hands, Rowan looked the mirror up and down, then nodded to himself. “This is as good a place as any, right here.”
He returned to rifling through the other randomly gathered materials for the coming spell, all of them most likely conjured from his own magic as well despite the tireless show he continued to display for the non-existent benefit of his two spectators.
As the dust around the tarp settled, more clinking and clanking, the hollow pops of vials being un-stoppered, the burble of liquids poured, and the rustling of dry herbs all replaced the otherwise tense silence.
Rebecca knew exactly what the Blackmoon Elf was about to attempt once he’d finished playing the masterful performer. She already knew she was about to help him with it, and the mere thought of it filled her with a white-hot compulsion to smash her fist clean through that mirror.
In all likelihood, Rowan would only laugh at her anger, shrug off the whole thing, and conjure another mirror in its place.
But his movements had slowed now, each action precise and intentional as he prepared the ritual space.
Another low growl rumbled through Maxwell’s chest and across the air between them. “I don’t like any of this.”
“That makes two of us,” Rebecca murmured.
He would like it even less once the ritual officially began.
So would she, but there was no turning back now.