Seven
When we got back to Coille, I took Evan home with me, and Narah, Abel, Justin, and Fletcher came along, wanting to see my house.
Cole said he would grab stuff for himself and his brother and be there shortly, and that Reggie was going to help him carry. He left me with the parting words: “I’m very much looking forward to my sleepover, Mere.”
I shook my head at him, but his wicked grin was infectious, and I had to smile in return.
We had to stop by the shelter so I could have Diane check Evan over. Everyone was pleased to meet her, as she was them, but she was very confused as to what had been wrong with Cole’s little brother.
“He was having seizures,” I explained to her.
She wanted him to follow up with his regular doctor, and when he told her he didn’t have one yet, she recommended a woman she liked in Lewisburg.
I took the card, even though wolves never got sick as a rule.
Injuries had to be purposely inflicted, or something supernatural had to have occurred.
I wasn’t worried about much happening to Evan again.
After we reached my home and I walked everyone up to my front door, Evan stepped inside, took off his shoes, and stumbled forward a moment before getting his feet back under him and walking straight over to the hearth, which was blazing away.
He snuggled up on the end of the sectional closest to the fire, wrapped himself in a blanket, and closed his eyes.
“Okay—” I smiled at Narah. “—I think he’s good for the night.”
“Oh, Merritt,” she breathed, staring straight up into what I thought of as the atrium of my house. It didn’t hurt that it was glass in the middle. “You have an enormous skylight. Aren’t you afraid that it will crack from the snow or ice or if it’s ever hit by a falling tree?”
I had planted all the trees around my home myself, and they were no more likely to fall than I was to catch a cold. “The glass is very thick, and it comes to a point, as you can see, so no. I’ve never had any trouble.”
“This is incredible,” Justin whispered. “It’s like living in the sky.”
There were deep woods all around us, the long drive out to the road out front, and above us, at the moment, dark clouds that I was guessing would soon pelt us with rain.
“You couldn’t possibly have done this yourself.” Abel glanced at me.
“Oh no, this was done by my family over several generations.”
Abel stared at me, and he didn’t appear happy. “May we sit?”
“Sure. Would you all like some tea? Desta makes the best, and she always tries the new brews out on me.”
“That sounds amazing,” Narah said. “Would you like us up here at your island?”
“Sit wherever you want. There are chairs all over, as you can see, and there’s a couch where you can look out at a small grove. Cole liked that area quite a bit when he visited.”
“Is it okay if I walk around, go upstairs?” Fletcher asked me. “I see books up there, and paintings and tapestries.”
The second floor was where most of my treasures were, and people who visited usually wanted to see them.
“Yeah, sure, g’head.”
He started up as Justin walked around, staring at the floor, putting his hand on the glass windows, and taking in how big the area was and the enormous copper pipes that ran up one wall.
“Is this your bedroom?” Justin asked me when he reached a door.
“No, that’s a guest room.”
“And where’s your room?”
“Way over here at the end of this wall by the kitchen.”
“Hey, Merritt?” Fletcher called down to me.
After putting on the kettle, I walked over into the middle of the room, out from under the fossilized wood walkways of the second floor, and looked up at him where he stood, looking down at me and holding on to the railing.
“Is that a bedroom?”
“It is. It belongs to my roommate, who’s not around that often,” I told him.
“It’s locked.” He smiled sheepishly. “I just wanted to see what it was.”
“Don’t worry about it. Even if she were here, if she was in her room and you tried to open the door, she wouldn’t care.”
“You live with a woman?”
Technically, no. I lived with a siren who could be gone for months at a time, but there was no way to explain that to any of them. “Yes. And I hardly see her, which makes her the perfect person to live with.”
“I wish I hardly saw Reggie,” Fletcher muttered before returning to his self-guided tour of my library. “I can’t wait until he’s mated so the lovebirds can live together.”
Darting back to the kitchen, I went to my tea cabinet and opened it up. “Okay, what kind of tea would you all—”
“You say you’re not a witch, Merritt.” Narah sounded odd, and when I turned to look at her, she was pacing on the other side of the island. “And yet you speak to ghosts and dispel them, you sent a wave of power through that room today that put us all on the floor—”
“Not Cole,” I reminded her.
“No, I…can’t think about that right… But Merritt, you somehow got rid of all those bodies last night, so why wouldn’t Abel jump to the logical conclusion that you could bury a corpse on our land while we slept?
” She shouted the last part. “You need to start talking, because I’m tired of waiting for answers! ”
Evan was exhausted, utterly dead to the world, and that was the only reason she didn’t wake him. It also didn’t hurt that he was on the other side of a five-thousand square foot space.
Fletcher heard, though, and he came down the stairs fast from the second floor, skidding to a halt back in the kitchen, standing so he could go to either one of us, whoever needed him. Abel stood beside his son, both of them unsure of me.
Everyone was silent and tense as the seconds ticked by, so of course it was then that the kettle started to whistle.
I looked at Narah. “Did you still want tea?”
She huffed out a breath, threw up her hands, and sat back down on one of the barstools, looking utterly miserable. “Yes, please.”
“Do you want me to read you everything that’s in this cabinet, or does a pumpkin cinnamon chai with cream sound good?”
“That one sounds perfect.”
Abel, Justin, and Fletcher sat down, and I began steeping the tea.
“I’ve lived here a long time,” I told Narah. “Not my whole life, but a long time. In all that time, I’ve learned how to do things.”
“Like speak to ghosts,” Narah stated.
“Yes.”
“And your grove is somehow magical.”
I took a quick breath, because the truth, for many, was hard to hear. “I have several members of the fae on my land, and they make it magical, yes. It’s not me, it’s them.”
“You’re telling me that you have magical beings who live on your land?”
“Yes.”
A minute went by in silence.
“You’re insane,” Justin said flatly before standing up and starting to pace, glancing over at his mother. “He’s insane. I can’t believe you wanted me to…bind him to me when he’s crazy.”
Sometimes I didn’t pay attention.
The first time I’d seen them, at The Bower, had not been the first time they’d seen me.
And yes, Fletcher, as well as Justin, had admitted that to me, but perhaps they’d been in town even longer than they’d told me, surveying, figuring out where they wanted to live.
It was easy to see, with very little reconnaissance work, that I did a lot for the town.
Through my restaurant, I funded places that served the community, and The Bower was a focal point.
More than anything else, it meant I was successful, which translated to me having money.
When they’d seen I was alone, I became the perfect candidate to join their pack. A lone wolf in need of a mate.
“I don’t expect you to take him as your mate,” Abel told Justin, continuing their conversation like I wasn’t there.
“We can’t actually have that. You need a mate to lead the pack with, someone strong and capable like your mother, as well as having children.
Certainly, I haven’t funneled so much pack money into you, your schooling, how you’re dressed, how you carry yourself, the contacts you’ve made, the network you’ve acquired through lucrative deals for us and other parties for you to now tarnish that with any assignations that would not meet societal standards. ”
That was me. I was what would not meet societal standards. Abel could not have been any more clear, as he glanced at me before returning his gaze to his son.
“But I’m well aware that you have other…needs, and having Merritt to satisfy those, to serve you in the capacity of companion, is a very good choice.”
“He thinks there are fairies on his land.” Justin gestured wildly at me.
I had fae, not just fairies, but I suspected that distinction would be lost on him.
“Merritt,” Fletcher began, “I’m so sorry. I thought Justin’s intentions toward you were honorable and—”
“You will be silent,” Abel snarled at Fletcher. “Your allegiance is to me, first and only. Do you want Justin to make you more agreeable?”
“No, Alpha,” he rushed out.
I was confused about what was happening. Everyone seemed very comfortable speaking plainly in front of me about what they all wanted, and in Fletcher’s case, about what he was sorry for, and that was strange.
“Merritt,” Narah began, “you must understand, I wanted you to come of your own free will. I never wanted Justin to use his power.”
His power? What power?
“Mother, you can’t think that I will—”
“Of course you will,” she told him. “Merritt did us a great service last night, he saved Evan today, and crazy or not, the children all saw something last night, something that Merritt alone communicates with.”
When I glanced at Fletcher, he was looking at me like he was in pain, and I could feel the regret rolling off of him. Whatever he thought was about to happen, he felt very bad about it, even though he was apparently powerless to change the outcome.
“I know you’re powerful, Merritt,” Abel told me, “and I need that in our ranks. For me now, as well as for my son, later.”
He wasn’t making any sense.
“You both felt his strength in the room today with Evan,” Narah stressed to her son. “You need to make him part of our pack.”
“Tea is off the table,” I told them. “I think you should all go.”