12. Sebastian
Sebastian
I t had been a year since Sebastian had visited his mother in Bayonne, and a wave of melancholy-tinged nostalgia hit him as he and Justin walked from the bus station to her house.
Mansion, really. The dwelling was one of the oldest in the suburb, nestled back from Broadway, one of the few in the packed New Jersey city to have any land attached to it at all.
As Sebastian led the way, he took in the shops and tree-lined streets of his youth. It all seemed so long ago now. After high school, he’d announced he wanted space from the Circle, to his mother’s horror. To forge his own way. Visits home since then had been few and far between.
Not that this was home. It wasn’t, not anymore.
But it did bring back memories, and there was something strange about escorting Justin through them.
He had no doubt the vampire would come around to being mates—Justin’s protective wall was crumbling already—but the process unnerved him.
Sebastian was navigating these men and their sensibilities like he was balancing a tower of ceramic dishes on his head.
He was on high alert, waiting for it all to come crashing down.
On the other hand, his magic and his chaos spirits loved it. They swirled around him, happy he’d come back and even happier his love life was so precarious.
It wasn’t as much fun when the chaos feeding them was his own.
Justin took in a breath as they rounded a curve, revealing the grounds of the mansion. Sebastian had been lucky to grow up there—there was a decent amount of land. Not much, by most people’s standards, but for a close suburb of New York City it was positively luxurious.
“It’s so big!” Justin’s eyes went wide. “That old tree is beautiful! And the hedge…”
It was beautiful, although maybe not as enticing as when Sebastian was a kid.
Still, Justin was right. The sun filtered through the leaves of the ancient maple, the intricate designs of shadow and light shifting against the front of the house with the breeze.
The beige-and-brown paint job was new. When Sebastian was young, it had been a stark, uniform white.
“Come on.” Sebastian grabbed Justin’s hand and pulled him toward the break in the hedge where the front walk began. He’d made the move without thinking, and although Justin looked shocked, he hadn’t let go.
When they stepped off the sidewalk, the air shifted, weighing down on them like the pressure of the deep ocean, and Justin grasped Sebastian’s hand tightly.
“It’s okay,” Sebastian said, squeezing back. “It’s the wards. It will take the defensive spirits a moment to recognize me, and then they’ll let up. ”
He led Justin a few steps toward the front door, and sure enough, the pressure decreased.
“Wow,” Justin said. “That’s intense.”
“I’m used to it,” Sebastian replied. “Although the defenses have been strengthened since the attack. It packs more of a punch than I remember.”
As they reached the front porch, Justin let out a quiet, surprised gasp. Sebastian wasn’t sure why.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s so…dark.” Justin swallowed. “The windows, everything is pitch black. It doesn’t seem like shades or blinds or anything…”
Sebastian looked up. The dark wooden shutters were positively sunny next to the unnatural darkness of the windows. He opened his senses, sensing the flow of spirits and energy.
“It’s another defensive spell. Usually, my mother tries to work against the whole ‘witch equals spooky’ vibe, but in the wake of the attack, she's battening down the hatches. It must have been worse than she implied on the phone.”
Sebastian let go of Justin’s hand, bounding up the steps and putting his hand on the polished brass doorknob. He waited for the lock to click. It took longer than normal, but after half a minute, the mechanism caught. He pushed open the massive wooden door.
The large stairs curled up on the left, and to the right, the hall led further into the house.
The smell of vanilla and burnt cedar wafted through the air.
Cedar was Sebastian’s mother’s preferred material for cleansing, and vanilla…
Well, the house had always smelled like vanilla.
Sebastian’s grandmother had loved to bake, and she’d passed that love on to her grandchildren .
At the center of the foyer stood Sebastian’s younger brother, Wolf. He’d always been the polar opposite of Sebastian, and time had calcified the differences.
Where Sebastian was tall and thin, Wolf was short and muscular, more ripped every time Sebastian came home. Instead of Sebastian’s pale skin, Wolf sported a deep tan, and rather than jet-black hair, Wolf’s was a rich chestnut.
He did not look happy.
Sebastian ignored his angry expression and gestured for Justin to step up and enter.
“Hi, Wolf.”
His brother frowned. “It’s about fuckin’ time.”
Sebastian bit back his snarky retort. It wouldn’t do his mother or the Circle any good to fight with Wolf, even if that’s what his brother was hoping for.
“Vee hit us in Manhattan. Trapped us in an elevator at the opera house right before she came here. By the time we got out, everything was all over.”
“Us?” Wolf’s eyes narrowed as he stared coldly at Justin. “Who the hell is this?”
Sebastian held out his hand, hoping Justin would step forward and take it, but the vampire simply nodded.
“Justin.”
“He’s from the Grosvenor coven,” Sebastian said, “and he’s my mate.”
“Of fucking course,” Wolf growled. “Of course you’d mate with a vampire.”
Wolf’s face turned an angry red. Sebastian knew his brother well enough to understand he was on the verge of an outburst.
“We don’t get to choose our mates, brother.”
“No, of course not,” Wolf replied, his tone dry and sarcastic. “You never choose to fuck things up. Disorder and chaos pour off you like a cheap cologne, infecting everything around you.”
“That’s not?—”
“We haven’t cemented the bond,” Justin said. The curly-headed vampire’s tone was even, but his toe was tapping against the hardwood floor. “We may not.”
Justin’s interruption took Sebastian aback. Did Justin still believe that? Surely, he could feel the pull between the three of them. How could he hold on to his stubbornness in the face of that?
Wolf was also surprised, and it broke his ire. He cocked his head to the side, his brow furrowed, considering the vampire.
“Huh.”
“I’ve been sent to speak to the head of the Circle from the Grosvenor coven.” Justin continued to speak with careful clarity. “We are considering the alliance she offered.”
“An alliance I warned her against,” Wolf grumbled, although it was clear Justin had caught him off guard. His anger had softened.
“Regardless, that’s why I’m here.”
Wolf sighed, scratching at his left forearm absentmindedly. “Go ahead. She’s in the second-floor office.”
Sebastian headed up the stairs without saying more. Wolf was always going to be angry, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Justin said before following him up the stairs, the wooden steps creaking as they ascended.
As they reached the long hallway of the second floor, Sebastian turned to Justin, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder.
“When did you learn to be so…diplomatic? You were so nervous about coming here.”
“I am nervous!” Justin whispered intensely. “But I owe Freddie and Anthony. I’m not going to fuck it up. I’ve done my homework.”
“Oh.” Sebastian considered his mate for a moment.
A single curl of blonde hair hung over the slender vampire’s right eye, and his skin glowed in the amber light of the ornate art deco sconces decorating the walls.
Justin projected an air of certainty, even if Sebastian could sense the churning anxiety underneath it.
“Come on. My mother’s office is at the other end of the hall. ”
“Why does your brother hate you?” Justin whispered as they made their way.
“He doesn’t hate me.” A tendril of sadness uncurled in Sebastian’s solar plexus, reaching upwards toward his neck.
“Veronica hates me. Probably. Wolf just… He is the only non-magical child in a house of witches. It made him the outsider. He overcompensated for it by throwing himself into technology and engineering. And a weird obsession with crossbows. But my chaos affinity always screwed up his plans, even as a kid.”
Justin furrowed his brow in confusion. Sebastian understood. The dynamic between him and his brother sometimes didn’t make sense to him, either.
“Imagine a nine-year-old building an elaborate castle out of popsicle sticks with a working drawbridge and several functioning trebuchets for a class project. Then, imagine a jumpy little chaos spirit, your eleven-year-old brother’s best friend, zipping around the house, and things going haywire.
And somehow you end up with a pile of garbage where a castle had once been.
That kind of shit happened all the time. ”
Justin frowned. “But as an adult?—”
“If that were it, maybe we’d be fine. But despite my mother’s protestations to the contrary, she was disappointed Wolf didn’t have talent.
He was left out of everything. It’s the height of irony that, of the three of us, I moved away from the Circle, and my sister is attempting a coup.
Meanwhile, he’s still here, masterminding all their technology. ”
They stopped in front of the heavy door to Sebastian’s mother’s office. It was significantly more intricate than the other doors on this floor, an abstract pattern of whirls and lines burnt into the brown-stained wood.
“Wait. Technology? I don’t understand.”
“You will.” Sebastian turned the doorknob and revealed the office.