21. Temptation
ELOISE
Amillion questions plague me regarding my mother’s involvement with Bad Witches Club, but neither Maeve nor Damien seem to have any answers. Both are anxious to get me out of there, despite my newfound acceptance by the vampire Morpheus. Maeve claims she didn’t know anything about my mother’s involvement with the murals, but when I press her on the fact that she must have known something considering it was her idea to show Morpheus my tattoo, she promises we’ll talk later and escorts Damien and me to the exit. I don’t fight her and willingly climb into the passenger seat of my Jeep. My nerves are shot, and I’m too exhausted from trying to process everything to come up with more insightful questions or to fight Damien for the wheel.
For most of the drive home, I close my eyes and curl onto my side, revisiting everything that happened tonight. Maeve says I can’t trust Damien, but can I trust Maeve, considering she only told me she was a witch after eleven years of friendship? My mother worked with the supernatural. Did my father know? Why didn’t either of them tell me? Tony ran a secret publishing company called Gold Weaver. At one point, I trusted him too. Does everyone in my life harbor some dark and mysterious secret? Will I wake up to learn my grandmother runs a gambling ring?
I must have fallen asleep thinking about it because the next thing I know, we’re pulling up the drive to Harcourt Manor. When Damien notices I’m awake, he says, “I found the other vampire I was looking for, Thaddeus. He knew about the warehouse but had never seen Tony there. He hadn’t heard of the magazine. Morpheus interrupted our conversation before I could tell you. Bad Witches Club was a dead end.”
“Did you know my mother?” I ask. He claims to have been on Earth almost four hundred years, which means he could have been around when the murals were painted.
“No. And before you ask, I’m not sure how she became involved with the Caspian Triune.”
“Caspian Triune?”
“That’s the group of supernaturals who run Bad Witches Club. They only recently completed the spell to bind to one another.”
“It’s not just Morpheus in charge?”
“No. A complete triune consists of a vampire, a witch, and a shifter.” When he can see that I have no idea what he is talking about, he explains. “Vampires are immortal.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“But they’re vulnerable during the day. Sunlight is lethal to all vampires.”
“At least some of the folklore is true.”
He laughs. “Much of it is. Shifters are innately powerful but mortal. And their power is incredibly volatile. They have normal human abilities during the new moon and supernatural strength, speed, senses, and healing capabilities around the full moon, but ironically that’s when their inner animal makes them prone to impulsivity. Many shifters lose their lives to hair-trigger tempers when they’re at their strongest.”
“Shifters are drunk frat-boys. Got it.”
The smile he shoots me lights up the cab.
“Witches aren’t physically powerful, but as you know, they are a force to be reckoned with due to their ability to wield elemental magic. But witches are mortal and surprisingly fragile. All that power in a pitifully human body.”
“I’ll try not to take that personally.” I lean my pitifully human body against the door.
He reaches over and brushes my cheek with his knuckle. “In a triune, a witch, a shifter, and a vampire are bound, and something remarkable happens. The vampire imparts their immortality on the shifter and the witch, and in return, the vampire receives the ability to walk in the sun. The shifter imparts supernatural strength, speed, senses, and healing on the witch and, in return, gains full control of his animal and an almost endless source of energy. The witch receives immortality, strength, speed, heightened senses, and accelerated healing from the shifter and vampire and, in return, is the source of the vampire’s ability to walk in the sun and the shifter’s dominion over their animal. Together, they are almost unstoppable. Morpheus is a shade like me but we’re close enough in an evolutionary sense to vampires for the magic to work. We were conjured here together but only I was bound to the Gowdies. He’s been a co-owner of Bad Witches Club for decades, but the triune is new. The witch he’s bound himself to is of the Caspian line, a water witch family. His shifter is a Davies. They draw power from their tiger forms. Together, I predict they’ll rule the supernaturals of Richmond soon. It’s the first triune with the power of a shade in history, and Morpheus is a powerful warrior.”
Gooseflesh parades up my arms, and I hug my jacket around me. I’m just getting used to the idea that shades, vampires, and witches are real, and here I am, learning there are also shifters. Will the world ever look the same to me again? I suddenly miss the false certainty that humans are all there is. Never again will I experience the peace that comes with that misconception.
The notion should keep me from delving deeper, but my curiosity gets the better of me. “Maeve said her coven conjured you from a dark and dangerous world.”
“Her assessment of my world is misguided, as were her ancestor’s actions.”
“You mentioned that Morpheus was with you. Why were you bound by the candle and he wasn’t?”
Damien turns introspective. “It’s late, and this is a long story.”
“I’m not tired, and after the night I’ve had, I plan to open up a bottle of wine. Why don’t you come in?” He nods once, although I sense reluctance in the way his body tenses, and he stares over the steering wheel. “That wasn’t an order or anything. I wasn’t candling you,” I clarify. “I’d just really like to talk. Would you care to come in and have a glass of wine?”
I might be imagining it, but the muscles in his face and neck seem to ease. “Yes, I would.”
He parks in the garage, and I lead him into the parlor, where I leave him to check on Grams before retrieving the bottle of wine I took from the Mobil station from the kitchen. I unscrew the cap and pour us a couple of glasses. It isn’t bad for gas station wine.
“I wonder what happened to Hank.” I’ve thought about Hank more than once since the incident. He did a bad thing stealing my money and attacking me, but the memory of his broken body on the pavement still haunts me.
Damien folds himself into the green velvet sofa beside me, making the heavy piece of furniture groan under his weight. “He’s still recovering in Richmond Memorial. He claims someone robbed him, but unfortunately, none of the security cameras were working, and no money was missing from the register, so the police are going on the assumption that he did, in fact, jump off the roof.”
I sip my wine. “I hope he doesn’t mention my Jeep or remember my license plate.”
“That would be difficult, considering I wiped his mind before I dropped him.” He flashes me a little fang.
My jaw drops. “Brilliant. How did you think of that in the moment?”
“I assumed you’d have to buy gas there again.” The corner of his mouth twitches.
“I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m relieved. Shouldn’t I feel more guilty for what happened to him?”
“Guilty for what? You didn’t do it.” His diamond eyes study me.
“I might as well have. You did it because of me.”
“And if I hadn’t, he’d have put you in a hospital bed, or a grave.” Damien believes that, just as he believes that Tony is a bad man, an evil man. Maybe he’s right.
“Maeve told me tonight not to trust you. That you murdered her ancestor.”
“The one who magically tore me and my two brethren from our world in an attempt to enslave us. Yes, I killed her and I do not regret it.” He says this through his teeth and I can tell the memory is still fresh, even after hundreds of years.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I love Maeve and it’s hard for me to believe that her family would do such a thing, but I can see the pain in Damien’s eyes. “Maeve didn’t tell me the whole story.”
He softens at my show of empathy. “Maeve may not know exactly, being a relatively young descendant of the witches who cursed me. I, on the other hand, will always remember that time. Unlike her, I lived through it, and it changed my existence forever.”
“Will you tell me, the way you remember it?” I pull my legs underneath me, squeezing a pillow to my middle, and hold my breath. I want to know the truth about how Damien became the advocate, but I won’t force him.
He grows serious and stands to pace the small room, almost like he’s not sure where to start. “To understand how I ended up here, you first must understand where I come from. My home is on Tenebris, a watery planet much like Earth with one island continent of the same name. Maeve might think of it as a world of darkness, but for me it was a world of life. My kind, shades, we are like vampires in that sunlight weakens us. Unlike vampires, we can survive it, but it makes us vulnerable. We are immortal in the dark. If a sword pierces our flesh, we simply blend into the darkness and come back together somewhere else. But in sunlight, we are mortal. In sunlight, we can be captured. What you need to understand is that before I was abducted and brought here, I was heir to the southernmost kingdom of Tenebris, the Kingdom of Stygarde.”
“Wait, wait, wait. What?”