Chapter 22. Blaise #2
The mania was gone from her tone, replaced by something sharp-edged and worried, as though Ambrose’s revelation had reset her entirely.
Her lips were drawn tight, and she seemed to be fighting a losing battle to school her expression into calm concern when what she clearly wanted was to hunt down Isadora and hex all her limbs clean off.
Without another word, she pulled out her phone and began furiously typing.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice cracking with the remnants of anger.
“I’m texting my best friend’s brother, Jake,” she said.
“He’s, like, the smartest person in the coven.
” She paused, then added, “Academically, at least. And he’s dating—” Another pause, longer this time, as though she were swallowing a string of curses.
“—Isadora’s daughter, Priscilla.” Her jaw tightened.
“He may not be emotionally intelligent, but he’ll know what to expect from a half witch, half siren.
And he can give us a heads-up on how she’s likely to try to steal the house—seeing as she tried to steal houses before she was exiled. ”
Caitlyn finished with a sharp, angry tap of her finger, then slid the phone back into the pouch of her overalls.
“You don’t need him to tell you,” Ambrose said quietly. “I already know.”
The silence that followed was palpable.
“Her compulsion can only last a few hours at a time,” he continued.
“That’s why she wouldn’t let me leave the house, even to get groceries.
Why she was reluctant to let me go into the forest to confront the hob.
The farther I got from her, the more like myself I felt again.
” He worried his bottom lip. “I still couldn’t tell I was under compulsion, but I could recognize that something was wrong. ”
Ambrose hesitated, then went on. “Just before I managed to escape, I overheard her in her spell room.” He paused again, brows furrowing as though he knew what he was about to say would sound ridiculous.
“She had a conch. You know, one of those seashells? I don’t know the exact mechanics, but I overheard her singing into it, and I believe it captures and concentrates her song.
” His gaze flicked to the doll. “I think she plans to get it into the house somehow. For it to take control of...” He paused. “Creep, was it?”
Creep’s fixed smile seemed somehow to widen.
“Okay,” Caitlyn said. Her voice sounded distant. “Okay. Well. We can handle that. She’s one person against the three of us. Not to mention Creep.” Caitlyn glanced down at the doll. “You can handle her if she gets past us, right? Drop a chandelier on her or something?”
Creep responded with a sharp, military nod.
I had a horrible feeling that whatever methods were now racing through Creep’s mind were far more inventive—and far more horrifying—than falling chandeliers.
Ambrose shook his head. “She’s dangerous, Caitlyn. She can just sing her song, and she could have one of us wrapping our hands around the other’s neck, and we’d do it gladly.”
“Isadora is a bitch, sure,” Caitlyn said, “but it’s not like she’s going to murder—”
“She will,” Ambrose cut in, his voice raw and pleading, as if he needed her to understand this. “She has murdered before. I don’t think you realize how hard she took being exiled from Briar Coven. She genuinely believes she deserves all the things you have.”
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
“She killed the previous witch who lived in her house,” he went on.
“All because she wanted a hob to wait on her hand and foot. Second best to a sentient house, I guess. And when the hob broke free of her compulsion and turned on her, she hired me. And that’s how she found out there was a Briar Coven house here.
..” He swallowed, guilt etched clearly across his face as he added quietly. “Because she went through my phone.”
Before I could reach out and tell him none of this was his fault, his expression hardened into steely resolve.
“Believe me, Caitlyn,” he said quietly. “She wants this house. And she’ll do anything to get it.”
Creep slammed her fist down on the table, hard enough to rattle the mugs. Something like Over my inanimate, dead body seemed to etch itself across her cherub face.
“How long do we have?” Caitlyn asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Ambrose said. “Maybe a week at most.”
Caitlyn nodded slowly. “Okay. That gives us some time, at least.” She looked between us. “How long will it take before you’re ready to travel?”
“I can go right now—”
“No, you can’t,” I said, cutting him off.
Ambrose’s dulled gaze narrowed on me.
“You haven’t fed in weeks,” I said.
A small knot of relief loosened in my chest. Whatever else she’d done to him, she hadn’t taken everything.
I couldn’t help flicking my eyes over the telltale signs—the grayish cast to his skin, the too-sharp angles of his jaw, the faint hollows beneath his eyes. Subtle changes, not as stark as a human starving for lack of physical food, but pronounced enough to knot worry low in my gut.
“And you haven’t fed regularly in six months,” I continued.
Over that time, my own feeding had been erratic—only when the hunger pangs became impossible to ignore. Ambrose, though, had been worse than me. He’d only slip away to feed once the hunger began to show physically.
At this stage, I wasn’t convinced he’d survive the car journey if we tried to leave right now. He’d need to feed properly at least a couple of times before I’d even consider moving him.
In fact, I suspected the only reason he’d made it this far at all was because fear and rage had carried him through.
When he’d nearly collapsed into my arms earlier, I’d felt it—the weakness in him, the way his bones had quivered once they were finally allowed to stop holding his massive frame upright.
“I—” he began, but I cut him off again.
“No, Ambrose,” I said firmly. “You’re staying here. And we’re not even considering going to the coven until I’m confident you’re well again.”
His eyes widened slightly, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of this new, uncompromising side of me.
“Do we agree?” I asked, looking at Caitlyn and then Creep.
Caitlyn nodded, color rising in her cheeks.
Creep followed with a sharp bob of her head.
A beat later, every shutter in the house slammed shut at once, the sound reverberating through the walls—a very clear warning that Ambrose would not be leaving this house until Creep deemed him fit to do so.
Ambrose let out a slow, defeated sigh.
I rested my hand gently over his, and his gaze lifted to mine.
“Do you want to tell us what she did to you?” I asked quietly. My shadows stirred beneath the table, brushing lightly against the back of his leg in silent reassurance.
Ambrose shook his head.
It wasn’t a no. Just a not yet.
I understood that instinct all too well. He would tell me eventually. But like me, he needed time. Time to sift through the fragments. To decide which memories could be spoken aloud and which still needed to stay buried.
For now, the details didn’t matter.
He was here. He was safe.
And he was starving.
My grip on his hand tightened almost imperceptibly as that reality settled fully in my chest. He didn’t have the strength to wait. Not days. Not even hours.
I glanced at Caitlyn, trying to project what I couldn’t yet say aloud.
She’d only just met Ambrose. Mate or not, starving or not, it wasn’t her responsibility to give him anything—not comfort, not understanding, not her body.
But I could.
And I wanted to.
I needed her to know that I didn’t love him more. That I wasn’t choosing him over her. That feeding him didn’t mean I was stepping away from her.
That—
Fuck. This was a fucking mess.
We needed time. Time for Caitlyn to get to know her second mate.
Time for her to decide how and when her bond with Ambrose became physical, at a pace that suited both of them.
Time for her to come to terms with the fact that there were two of us, and that the love between Ambrose and me had always existed too.
Time for her to accept that Ambrose and I would be intimate with each other.
Time for her to decide whether she wanted to share that intimacy with us together or apart.
But right now, all I wanted was enough time to keep him alive.