8. A New Deal
ELOISE
By the time I climb the winding drive to Harcourt Manor, I’ve run out of tears. I’ve also burned through all the adrenaline my body produced during my escape from Tony’s office. I barely have the energy to keep my eyes open.
I stop in the driveway and stare up at the two-story colonial home with its sweeping wraparound porch. The pedimented dormers always give me the impression of eyebrows, like the house itself is watching over me.
This place is a treasure trove of memories. Built in the early 1910s by my great-grandfather, every generation has added something, but it remains distinctively Harcourt. My heart clenches at the mere thought of letting it go.
Of one thing I am positively certain, Tony retains no affection for me whatsoever.
I’d suspected he didn’t love me anymore. Maybe, if I’m being honest, true love wasn’t what brought us together in the first place. Deep down, though, I believed he possessed some affinity for me. But tonight, I searched for an emotional lever to pull, some memory I could tug to get him to work with me on this house thing, and came up empty-handed. My pleas were met with nothing but cruelty and contempt.
I wish I could say the experience made me angry. Anger is a useful emotion that can motivate, spur action, and bring clarity to a situation. I’m too tired to feel angry. What I feel is small. Tiny. Inconsequential. A fly trying to take on Goliath without the benefit of a slingshot. I have little money. No prospects. And my only remaining family member is at death’s door.
A ping comes from my dashboard. The red oil light blinking on. Fuck. My ancient Jeep is bleeding black gold. The gas is low too. “Pick some up tomorrow, old girl.” I rest my forehead on the steering wheel. She was my dad’s once. I pray there are still some miles left in her.
Things are going from bad to worse. I did manage to squirrel away some cash before I left Tony. I’m not a complete idiot. After the first time he hit me, I started secretly stockpiling every bill I could get my hands on. I have a little over two thousand dollars to see me through, but it isn’t going to last long unless I start working again.
Mentally, I move find a job up on my to-do list.
Once I park the car, I shuffle inside and cruise down the hall to check on Grams. The moment I see she’s okay, fresh tears start to fall. I wipe them away, returning to the parlor where she won’t hear me cry. I click on the table lamp and check my reflection in the gallery mirror. A chain of red bruises ring my neck and wrist. They’ll turn purple in time. I’ll have to find ways to cover them until they’re healed.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I promised myself this would never happen again. It’s why I left Tony in the first place. He’s now physically abused me three times.
More tears come. Do I have victim tattooed on my forehead? Why did I allow myself to be alone with him? Did I really think I could convince him to give me five hundred thousand dollars worth of property? For God’s sake, Tony used to fume when I tucked five dollars into a homeless person’s cup. He isn’t known for his generous heart.
My spiral of self-loathing is interrupted when the lamp flickers, and the room plunges into darkness.
“Have you had your fun?” a gruff voice says from behind me. I turn to find the advocate leaning against the unlit fireplace in a column of moonlight. He snaps his fingers, and the light comes back on. Better to see how positively pissed off he looks.
“I thought you were coming at midnight.” I wipe under my eyes again, although there is no hiding my blotchy, mascara-streaked face.
“It is midnight, little bird.”
I glance at my watch. I guess it is. Time flies when you stop three times on the drive home because you can’t see through your tears.
“It doesn’t have to be midnight, you understand.” He pushes off the mantel and glides toward me. Darkness incarnate. The night itself in a dress shirt and trousers. At the rate he”s moving, I should easily be able to follow where he is in the room, but somehow I lose track and then he’s standing behind me. Hot breath caresses the back of my neck. My nose fills with the scent of dark spice. “You’ve already cast the spell.”
I draw a shaky breath.
“We have an agreement,” he continues in a lethally quiet voice that makes the hair on my arms stand on end. He circles me, close but not touching. “You have the power to command me to visit you as necessary. I would have expected Maeve Gowdie to explain as much, but then maybe she did, and you simply didn’t understand. This evening’s spectacle suggests you don’t understand a number of things about how a magical agreement works.” He’s in front of me, his nose almost brushing mine. Behind me again. My heart thunders. My palms break a sweat. Shadows play around us and I swear I can feel one brush my ankle. “Are you a child, playing with magic like you might play with matches?”
His words strike a blow, but I’m already numb. I’ve withstood too much tonight. My eyes lose focus. I’m here but not really. Suddenly cold, although I’m still wearing my coat.
His gaze settles on my neck, the bruising there, and he goes perfectly still. I think I see fury contort his features, then it’s gone. When he speaks again, his voice is softer, almost kind. “Our agreement still stands. The man is not beyond my reach. Say the word, and I will kill him.”
I blink slowly, swallowing through a throat still gritty from being choked. “What’s your name?”
“You don’t need it to employ my services,” he counters. ”The Gowdies call me the advocate.”
I slip my hand into my coat pocket and squeeze the candle. “Please, your real name. I want to know.”
A puzzled look tightens his features. ”Damien.”
“Damien.” When I say it, he closes his eyes for a beat, and I’m glad I asked. He is a person, maybe not human, but an individual. He deserves to be addressed by an actual name. “You’re right that I didn’t fully understand the spell. Maeve told me you were an advocate who would help me save my house, not that you would murder Tony.”
He tips his head, scrutinizing every part of me with that seemingly perpetual scowl on his lips. “You knew I was a monster when you called me. I deal in death. How else did you expect I’d solve your problem?”
I want to give him some insightful retort, but in my exhaustion my mind has gone completely blank. “I don’t know. I guess I made a mistake.”
His brilliant silver gaze settles on my neck again. “Then why, when the man has made such a mess of you, won’t you free me to kill him now?”
I release a deep breath. “Because I’m not a murderer.”
The corner of his mouth lifts into a sneer. “No, you are a trembling sparrow who’s been knocked out of the sky and insists on flying back into the window again and again. How many times will you smash your head into your reflection before you understand that it’s killing you?” The steely edge of his tone cuts through me.
“Now you’re being cruel.”
“Am I?” He circles me again, that scornful expression frozen in place. “I’ve lived a long time. Many of your lifetimes. I can tell you without a doubt that Denardi is evil. He wears his viciousness like armor. He stinks of festering, insufferable arrogance. If there is any man alive who deserves his comeuppance, it’s him.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“The same way I can look at you and see a bird who’s had her wings crushed.”
I shrug out of my coat and toss it on the couch. “Maybe. Considering I’m standing here with you, a self-confessed monster and murderer, and feeling perfectly safe, I think it’s clear I’m missing a crucial instinct for self-preservation.”
“Then allow me to kill him!” Damien paces like a caged lion.
“I can’t. Tony being evil is about Tony. Me exchanging my blood for his death is about me. I’m not evil. I can’t do it.”
Damien studies me, suddenly astutely curious. “Tell me this, if you are nothing like him, how did you end up married to him?”
I lower myself onto the green velvet sofa with a groan. “It’s a long story.”
“I have nowhere to be.” He crosses his arms and settles into his stance as if he has no intention of leaving until I tell him my sorry tale. I suppose I owe him an explanation, considering I reneged on our agreement.
“My parents were murdered right after I turned seventeen. They’d gone into Richmond to do some shopping and stopped at a gas station on the way home. A twenty-eight-year-old man chose that moment to rob that gas station. The police think my parents got involved somehow. My dad was a hero. Doesn’t surprise me at all he might have tried to help the attendant. Both my parents were shot and killed, along with the employee. They caught the man who did it. He’s doing life in Virginia State.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Damien says in a way that”s disturbingly human.
“Thanks. Anyway, afterward, I couldn’t eat or sleep. Maeve and I were already a little wild, but I went crazy. Crazy enough for even her to worry about me.”
“What counts as insanity to a human like you?” Damien inches closer, as if he’s genuinely interested.
“I drove my mother’s Camry into a light pole on purpose because I wanted to feel the airbags hit my face. I wanted to feel something. I wanted to be reminded I was alive.”
Damien hisses.
“At the time, Tony’s family was renting the farmhouse next door. After the Denardis found out about the death of my parents, they came to check on us and brought food. Every other day, Tony was on our doorstep with something for Grams and me. I’d see him on the grounds sometimes too, just looking out for us. I was seventeen. He was five years older than me. I wasn’t attracted to him. I was too busy juggling knives to be interested in anyone. But then, one day, I was standing on the edge of the cliff at the back of our property, watching the river. I had the strongest urge to jump. I didn’t want to die so much as I wanted to know what it felt like to fall. I don’t know if I would have done it or not, but suddenly his arms were around me, and then he was kissing me.”
“And you liked that. Him kissing you?”
I meet the monster’s diamond-colored gaze. “I liked the distraction of it. I liked that he was older. I liked how rough he was, I mean before the abuse, when he kissed, he kissed hard. When he held me, it was tight, almost painful. It shocked me out of my reality.” I can’t believe I just admitted that. I’ve never told anyone, not even Maeve, but the truths just keep gurgling to the surface like raw sewage. “We started dating, and he snapped me out of the self-destructive spiral I was in. Talked me into going to college when I graduated high school that May. Looked out for my grandmother while I was away. And then he asked me to marry him four years later when I finished my degree.”
“Sounds like a real hero,” he drawls.
Damien doesn’t shift on his feet or seem like he needs to sit, even though my story has grown long. He stands like a statue, still as marble, his full attention on me. I might’ve found that kind of attentiveness flattering once. Might still if I thought it had anything to do with attraction and not hunger for what is pulsing through my veins. Absently, I rub my bruised wrist. “I married Tony because I thought he was what I needed. But as soon as we were married, he changed.”
“What a surprise.”
I frown at the judgmental snark. “Actually, first he fixed this house, and then he changed.”
“He fixed the house?”
“Sinkhole under the property. Grams found a huge crack in the foundation, and Tony paid for and managed the extensive repairs. That’s why he has a claim to it now. But afterward, it was like he thought he owned me. He treated me like a pet, including hitting me when I did something that made him angry. A black eye and a broken rib later, I left him.”
“Is that when you filed for divorce?”
Averting my gaze, I take interest in my tangled fingers. “Actually, he filed for divorce once I moved out. No effort at reconciliation. He was happy to see me go. Tonight, I learned he was sleeping with his secretary the entire time we were married.” I rub my temples. “Honestly, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. He rarely touched me, even in the beginning. He was the only man I’d ever been with. God, tonight he suggested he wanted us both. Her for her body and me to control as his little robot wife. Sick, right?”
Damien rubs his chin, expression dark like he’s late for an appointment to kick kittens. The grandfather clock’s incessant ticking fills the wordless space between us. “Am I to gather from this pitiful story of yours that you refuse to allow me to kill Tony because he provided you with a few casseroles and told you what to do with your life?”
I snort. “Fettucine and the patriarchy. I was helpless to resist.”
Damien ignores my failed attempt at humor. “Very well, little bird, if you wish to call off our arrangement, so be it. But undoing one bargain requires another to take its place. I will agree not to kill Tony… in exchange for more of your blood.”
Finally. “Deal.”
His icy gaze rakes down my body. “Then, stand up and take off your clothes.”