Chapter 5 #2
“Ah, yes,” Caleb grumbled. “Why don’t we befriend the queen of England, too?”
“I’m sure Fontaine has thought this through,” Jimmy chastised.
“Do you ever grow tired of agreeing with him?”
“Do you ever grow tired of disagreeing with him?”
“You cannot imagine how much time I’ve had to plan this.” Jack gave Caleb a hard look. “Emmy here will transform our appearances so we’re completely unrecognizable to the Society. She’ll also make us all the money we need for Mistfield to be ready to receive visitors by June.”
Her laugh exploded from her so abruptly, she nearly choked. He was serious. Which was an even stronger indication of his lunacy,
because even if he could somehow get her magic back, she’d never transformed a face in her life.
“June?” Jimmy set down his fork. “But that’s only a few weeks from now.”
“Four, to be precise.” Jack’s piercing gray eyes glanced about the table, marking each of them in turn. “At the start of the
summer, just as New York’s elite begins to flock to Newport, gossipmongers in tow, the Society of the Charmed sneaks away
to Avalon-on-Hudson. For the month of June, it’s exclusive party after party, ball after ball, without a single reporter in
sight. You cannot imagine the elaborateness of these private events. No expense is spared. Although most reside in New York,
members travel from all over the country to attend.”
Emmy began piling more venison on her plate. At least when Jack kicked her out, she’d leave with a full stomach.
“Do you know who holds the inaugural ball each year?” Jack waited for Emmy to lift her gaze. “The Windsors.”
The meat in Emmy’s mouth turned to chalk. Grace’s aunt and uncle.
“I have our new identities all sorted out, but we need new faces.” Jack set his strange coin—his relic—in front of Emmy. This
close, it was larger than a quarter, its surface covered in swirls of silver and gold, as if they’d resisted being smelted
together.
“Don’t touch it,” Caleb hissed as she reached for it. “That thing is cursed.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Rose would be the first one to remind you that curses aren’t real.”
“Yes, but that abomination led to her ruin!”
Pushing his dark hair off his forehead, Jack turned to Emmy.
“My sister, like my mother, could glimpse the future. But their visions were brief and mostly abstract. Never one to be deterred, Rose spent years scouring old grimoires in search of a way to increase how much brume she could pull at once. Relics are typically made with a specific cut of bone from a deceased family member’s sternum, but Rose made this one .
. . differently. And with it, her visions became much clearer. ”
“Differently?” Caleb scoffed. “She desecrated the grave of a centuries-old witch!”
Jimmy bit back a grin. “I thought we weren’t supposed to say witch.”
Prophetic magic. Carved bones from dead relatives. As tempted as Emmy was to eschew everything about the Society, a larger,
traitorous part of her was bursting with curiosity.
“She borrowed a bone fragment from a long-dead charmed person with the gift of amplifying other people’s power.” Jack shrugged.
“Didn’t you help her dig up the grave?”
“Only because I didn’t think it would work.” Tight-lipped, Caleb glanced at Emmy. “The only time Rose used that relic, she
drew our deaths. In vivid, unforgiving detail.”
Emmy whipped toward Jimmy. “You’ve seen your own death?”
“Not me,” Jimmy said quickly. “I don’t think she knew me well enough to draw me.”
Jack shrugged. “It’s rather useful information. I knew I wouldn’t die in Grimsbane.”
“And yet here you are, formulating a diabolical plan that will put you back in danger.”
“Caleb—”
“If you’re so hellbent on making this girl help you, she should know the risks.” Caleb’s hard look bore into Emmy. “Oliver
Stratton will drive a knife through Jack’s throat.”
“Caleb, enough.”
“And judging by how young they both look in the drawing, it’ll happen soon. Very soon.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Rose’s visions were not written in stone.”
“Name one that did not come true.”
“How about all those pretty girls?” He grinned at Caleb. “I haven’t kissed them yet.”
So he was a rake. How unsurprising.
Caleb turned to Emmy. “If you walk away, he’ll have to quit this madness.”
“If she walks away, I’ll go after Oliver looking like I do in the prophecy.” Jack helped himself to more wine. “If you’re
so worried about me, let Emmy here transform my face.”
“Are you determined to drink yourself to death, too? You’ve had three glasses already.”
“Now who is the one doubting Rosie’s visions?” Jack lifted his goblet in a mock toast, and Jimmy hid his amusement behind
another bite.
Caleb burst from his seat. “Rose would hate this. Your life matters more than avenging her death.”
“Nothing matters more than that. Nothing.” Vicious pain swept across Jack’s face, so acute, Emmy flinched.
So Jack Fontaine did have a heart. And for his sister, it bled.
Was her death somehow related to his arrest? And if so, what did that have to do with Grace? How Emmy longed to ask, but he
would not answer, not unless she agreed to help him.
“I’ve heard enough.” Folding his napkin with more fury than Emmy would have thought possible, Caleb stormed out of the dining
room.
“It’s Rose. He still can’t talk about her.” With a quiet sigh, Jimmy pushed away from the table. “You know I trust you, Fontaine,
but this all sounds really far-fetched. Even for you.”
“Et tu, Li?” Jack’s slow smile was entirely unsettling. “I thought you wanted Emmy to clear her name, so she doesn’t have to hide for the rest of her life.”
“I want both of your names cleared, but this is dangerous.”
“What if Emmy decides to stay?”
Emmy bit back her protest. Neither of them was even looking at her.
“I go where she goes.” Jimmy shrugged as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “I owe it to her father. Hell, I owe
it to you, Ems. We’re family.”
He meant his words. And for Jimmy, who’d worked himself to the bone to send money back home, there was nothing more important
than family. Even if he was the bait Jack had used to lure her to Mistfield, she was foolishly relieved to have Jimmy here.
Jack’s gaze flitted between them, his expression guarded. “Understood.”
Once the door swung closed behind Jimmy, Emmy shifted in her seat. Back home, she’d been alone with young men plenty of times,
whether in the coal cellar or in her flat while they waited for Papa. But Jack unsettled her. And for good reason. He was
the sort of person who saw someone at their worst—like her in Grimsbane—and toyed with them.
Fortunately, Jack did not attempt to engage her further, instead seizing Caleb’s and Jimmy’s plates and dumping the remaining
venison on both his and Emmy’s. As he abandoned his utensils, she did, too, her ravenous appetite overriding her self-consciousness.
When every last scrap was gone, Emmy pushed her plate out of reach. “Your plan hinges on my magic.” She stopped herself from
adding And it’s gone.
After wiping his mouth with a napkin, he set it down. “Give me your hand.”
Emmy did not move.
“I don’t bite. Unlike you,” he added, those gray eyes alight. “Come on; I’ll show you.”
Eyeing him warily, she reached her arm across the table, palm up. He pressed the relic into it and closed her fingers around
it, keeping his hand over hers.
He was so warm, she gasped, but before she could pull away, she felt—something.
Emmy stilled, holding her breath.
It was a tendril of that cool, otherworldly feeling. A slight heaviness to the air, though when she reached for it—for the
brume, as Jack had called it—she could not touch it. Something was still blocking her, but she could feel magic again. And it was thrilling.
Leaning back in his seat, Jack grinned like a child who’d just acquired a new toy. “Many Society members wear ordinary relics,
but those are mere candles, while this one is an inferno. We have to keep it hidden. They can never know.”
As if Emmy had anyone to tell. Her hand tightened around the strange coin. “If I help you, this relic stays with me for as
long as I’m here.”
A bluff. Even if Emmy could transform faces—which she couldn’t—she could not fathom fooling the Society of the Charmed. In
a matter of weeks, no less. But with this relic, she just might get her magic back before Jack kicked her out.
Jack leaned so close, Emmy glimpsed silver flecks in his bloodshot eyes. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Emmy. Can I
call you Emmy?”
“No.” Truthfully, she did not care, but each concession was a slippery slope.
“Caleb was right about my sister’s prophecies: they were never wrong.” His voice was quiet, almost wistful. “And if Oliver gets me before I can get him, the relic should be with someone who will see our vendetta through. So you can have it. Even when I’m gone.”
Jack held out his hand, offering her a gentleman’s handshake.
She trusted that as much as she trusted his supposed plans for vengeance: not one bit. Still, Emmy could not walk away, not
when there was a sliver of hope for her magic.
Emmy shook his hand. The heat of his skin prickled her palm, and a strange excitement stirred in her like a shifting tide,
even as she was careful to reveal nothing. “I will not be a pawn in your chess game, Jack Fontaine.”
“Never.” His lips curved into a dark smile. “You’ll be the knights, the rooks, and the queen, combined.”