16. Previously on As The Chair Spins
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PREVIOUSLY ON AS THE CHAIR SPINS
DEKE
W ith my siblings there to fill in the gaps, I dove into the deep history that I’d barely skimmed the surface of during our previous conversation.
I explained how Absolve used stolen souls to become powerful. How they’d used the witch trials to see how quickly hysteria could catch on and how far people were willing to go to fit in.
How much people were willing to hate when they were presented with an innocent target while the actual guilty watched on without consequence.
And then I told her about the battle in the church after Nate’s friend betrayed him and set us up. The evil that coated the entire building. Emanated from it to taint the town.
The emptiness .
Aurora took my hand, and I waited to see if she was going to pinch me.
She didn’t. She just squeezed me tightly, easing the ache and filling the spot in my chest.
Juno jumped in at my pause to confirm what I’d long assumed. “Joseph Martin was warded, not just the room. Our own magicks bounced back against us. Or did you already know that? Were you left there?”
“I woke up a few hours later in the middle of nothing. Come to find out, I was partway across the country and had to hitch a ride with a French explorer to get back to Salem even though I already knew you three were gone. I felt it.”
That time, Aurora didn’t just squeeze my hand. She reached her other hand over to touch my chest.
I shook off the loneliness that’d haunted me and asked my siblings the question I’d been dying to know for centuries. “What happened to you?”
Nate spoke first, telling us about how he’d spent the stretching years living as a ghost without his memories. Invisible, he’d been rooted to the house. Once she’d inherited it, he’d been able to leave with her. And then eventually speak to her. She told us about how she’d sought help to get rid of the stalker voice.
First, with the kind of con-people who took out late-night ads on local TV.
Next, with a man they eventually learned was a soul-stealer, human trafficker member of Absolve.
Then finally who she believed was a real witch.
“That’s me, baby.” Juno did jazz hands before deflating. “I’m still mad I couldn’t get rid of him.”
Nate held his arms out. “What did I do?”
“Nothing. But you’re a challenge I couldn’t best, and those are rare. My ego isn’t happy.”
“Your ego is fine, you pick-me,” he shot back.
Juno’s angry glare cut to Denny. “Didn’t I say to block his TikTok access?”
Denny rolled her eyes. “Anyway, thankfully, she wasn’t successful because he got his body back. And eventually his memories.” Her cheeks flushed, leaving little doubt what had brought on the change.
Juno took over next, sharing that she’d been adopted and grew up simply believing she was a great and all-powerful witch. She hadn’t known who she truly was until Nate had called her his sister.
“While she was high as a kite after her stores had been destroyed,” Stellan added.
Genuine heartbreak wafted from my sister. “Those Absolve bastards destroyed priceless art.”
You own an art gallery?
That’s the most shocking discovery today.
“Better,” Juno answered my mate’s question before it’d finished illuminating across the air. “A comic store.”
That checks.
“Plus, a bookstore and candy store. All three interconnected. They’re amazing. But those bastards tried to take them from me.”
“Yeah, well, they tried to take you from me when they shot you,” Stellan growled.
My voice was just as rough. “They shot you?”
Juno just waved that off. “I was fine.”
“You didn’t know you would be,” Stellan grumbled as he held her tighter.
Juno backtracked, filling us in on meeting Stellan when he’d been the detective assigned to the destruction of her stores. He’d suspected her involvement at first before giving in to his attraction. Juno had continued to fight it, him, and the entirety of the world on her own.
Especially when she thought she’d put a target on her mate’s back because mindless Absolve lemmings continued to try to take them out.
And when she thought she was losing her magicks.
“But I wasn’t weakened.” She gave a cocky smirk that quickly fell. “Wait, this would be better with a chair spin.”
Stellan gave the slowest, most half-assed spin.
It was good enough for her because her smirk returned. “My mate made my powers grow . I know, I didn’t think it was possible, either. But thanks to him, everything comes easier, and I barely have to try.” She waved a hand.
And an asthmatic dog appeared.
Breathing heavily before it even started running, it quickly toppled ass over head.
Victoria let out a small bark as she eyed it with disdain from her spot near the fireplace.
The dog ran over and sniffed her. It shook like someone had set it on vibrate. Victoria gave a haughty sigh before slowly trotting off with him.
“See?” Juno said. “No effort. Like breathing.”
“We believed you,” Denny said, fighting—and failing—to hide her lip curl as she watched the dogs go down the hallway.
“I like to show off,” she said, to the surprise of exactly no one. “Plus, he’s been lonely without Lea to come get him when I’m gone.”
The heartbreak about her stores was nothing compared to the grief that darkened her expression.
“Lea was Juno’s prematurely expired friend and employee,” Denny filled in. At my lowered brows, she mouthed, “ Ghost .”
“And she was the best damn prematurely expired friend a gal could ask for,” Juno said before telling us about how Lea had sacrificed herself to a member of Absolve. It turned into a bizarre ramble about cotton candy flavors. I must’ve missed something because it also included cheese. She ended it by wiping at her eyes. “I just hope she’s shredding gnarly waves with Chamuel right now.”
“Or eating the cream cheese-filled mouse pretzels with Michael,” Nate said.
At Juno’s weird comment, Aurora perked up. But at Nate’s even stranger one, she frantically scrawled, her hand a blur even without the magicks assist.
Who is Chamuel? And Michael?
“You know how people talk about guardian angels?” Juno asked.
Aurora rapidly nodded.
“In our case, it’s literal. Guardian arch angels, to be precise. Michael for Nate, Chamuel for me, and Rafe for Lilith. I wonder who you’ll get, Deke.”
And where’s that bastard been all this time?
I thought about her words again, and my brows lowered. “Why Lilith?”
“Wow, I’m not allowed to have a guardian archangel?” At my likely panicked expression, she let me off the hook. “I’m kidding. I’m still surprised, too. They gave me one because I was the only one who could reach Lennon.”
Aurora released my hand for the first time since the twisted story started. She brought her bent legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them in a defensive pose.
I leaned close and brushed her hair away from her face. “Let’s take a break.”
She shook her head as she wrote.
I’m good. Just getting comfortable. Keep going.
“You sure?”
A nod.
A lie?
I split my attention between my mate and Lennon as he shared about living over and over, each time as a doctor. Growing more cynical and removed with every lifetime until he lost a vital part of who he was.
Until he no longer cared .
The Four had our specific roles. Our places in the world. We fit together, four parts of a whole. We’d all been close, but Lenuson and I had shared a slightly stronger bond because of our similarities.
I never felt it more than at that moment.
The lengths he went to avoid people. How he’d secluded himself away. How he’d nearly taken a research job across the country just so he wouldn’t have to deal with patients on a daily basis.
It was basically what I’d done when I’d settled up in the woods in Maine. I’d planned to hide there, only leaving the cabin for what limited supplies I couldn’t have delivered. I hadn’t been able to fight who I was, though. Before long, I’d started Black Horse, but the intention had been there.
Luckily, Lennon hadn’t moved, or he wouldn’t have gotten stuck in an elevator with Lilith. He’d been what she needed on one of the worst days of her life, and she’d reminded him why those connections were important.
“To be fair,” Lennon said, “I thought I was dying at first. My memories were trying to push through every time I was near my mate. And they did it by stabbing my brain until I feared I had a brain tumor. I even got an MRI, but thankfully, Juno interrupted before I had to explain why my brain doesn’t look normal.”
Juno held her index finger and thumb close together. “It’s tiny. Like a shriveled raisin rolling around in that giant head.”
Lennon gave her the finger—making it even harder to unite the reserved, empathetic man I remembered to the modern one sitting on the other side of the couch—before wrapping his arm back around Lilith. His smile was proud as he spoke about how fiercely she protected those who needed it, and that he was lucky she didn’t kick his ass for being a cold bastard.
She patted his hand. “There’s still time.”
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Juno said as she stood to pace.
Stellan spun the chair to follow her movements, like he couldn’t stand to have her out of his sight.
Not that I could judge. I’d set up a spot for Aurora in the kitchen at Black Horse because having her in the office was somehow too far away.
Juno gestured to the couple at the bay window. “Nate got stuck in place, turned invisible, and lost his memories. Not to mention his soul.”
My head snapped to look at my brother because I didn’t feel that kind of void from him.
And I would’ve. I’d felt it in others. Not because they were victims of Absolve.
Some people were just born without one.
“Don’t worry, brother,” he reassured with a content smile. “When Denny gave me her love, she shared hers.”
“It’s a weird feeling, huh?” Stellan asked. I thought he was talking to me or Nate, but his focus was on Aurora. He tipped his head to where she rubbed her sternum. “That pull of your soul. Even once you know what it is, it takes some getting used to.”
Aurora swallowed hard and dropped her hand.
“Baby?” I whispered, but she just grabbed her drink and knocked off the last of it.
Something is wrong .
Through everything my siblings shared, she’d asked for clarification but had barely blinked at the ludicrousness. Now that they were done, though, something was eating at her. It wasn’t the same despair or hollowness from before.
It was worse .
My chest burned like I’d swallowed acid.
I rested my hand on the top of her bent knee to teleport us out of there, but Juno said the only thing that could stop me.
“I was in purgatory, and?—”
“What?” I asked. “You went into how much detail about your damn cotton candy, but you left out that you were in purgatory?”
“Have you never heard of saving the twist for the end?” She shook her head like I was the foolish one. “It’s called good storytelling… And also, I forgot.”
“You forgot you were in—” I ran my palm down my face and beard before gesturing to her. It wasn’t worth the fight, and the less I interrupted, the less likely she’d be to forget another minor detail.
Like maybe one of them had been reincarnated as Elvis.
“Sorry, continue.”
“Thank you.” She put her nose in the air and resumed pacing. “As I was saying, I was in purgatory, also lost my memories, and then they were worried I was no longer immortal. Which I’m pretty sure was the curse goal, and I just lucked out. Or I’m so powerful, even pure evil couldn’t take me down.” She gestured to Lennon. “And this bleeding heart became a cold-hearted bastard, along with the aforementioned memory loss.” Halting, she put her hands on her hips and studied me. “But not only did you keep your memories, you weren’t cursed at all.”
“Yes, he was.”
Everyone’s attention shot to Aurora when she spoke. Not with her pen, but with her beautiful voice that was hoarse from underuse.
“I don’t know how,” she continued, “but I can feel his emotions. He missed you. He’s relieved. He’s thrilled to be reunited. But it’s so much more than that. The longer you’re here together…” A ghost of a smile touched her lips, there and gone. “It’s like a big meal of comfort food and Christmas morning and a favorite book, all rolled into one. Family clearly means an immense amount to him, but for centuries, he had no idea where you were or whether you were even still alive. Do you know how that unknown can eat at a person? It becomes an obsession. Wondering each morning if it’ll be the one. The day when he finds one of you. Or even just a hint. A lead. Something. Anything . You hope and you hope and you hope until there’s nothing left. Until you give up.”
I wanted to reach for her. Pull her into my arms. Wipe away the tears I doubted she knew she was crying. Ask her how she knew exactly what I’d experienced and why sorrow dripped from her voice. But I kept my mouth shut, assuming that getting it out would make her feel better.
She stared blankly ahead and kept going. “Then there’s the loneliness. This bone-deep ache that you can try to ignore, but it doesn’t work. Not when every single day is a reminder that you’re alone in the vast world. That even if you find someone you get along with, you can’t let them in. That you have to build walls on top of walls and then line those with barbed wire.”
“Baby—” I started since I’d been wrong. Talking was doing nothing more than filling that hollowness in her with the poison rot that burned in my chest.
Her feet hit the ground, and she sat up. “Keeping his memories was his curse. It was the cruelest thing they could’ve done to him, but the universe or the devil or maybe those powers-that-be you mentioned weren’t done. Because his siblings have beautiful mates. A detective. A selfless woman who protects the vulnerable and has an angel. No.” She frantically shook her head. “An arch angel. I don’t know what Denny does, but I’m sure it’s something as lovely as her. And noble, of course, since she shared her soul.” Aurora’s hauntingly beautiful eyes met mine and broke my damn heart because all I saw was pain
So much fucking pain.
“While they get those, you’re stuck with a freak like me. A fucked-up sinner who was created by the devil”—her palm pressed to her chest—“who bears his mark because she’s also cursed. Not in an honorable fight, but by God. And I’m not egotistical enough to think that being paired with me is worse than losing your siblings. Unlike all those unanswered questions you’ve had to live with, I will be easy to ignore. But on top of all you’ve been through, it still sucks for you, and I’m sorry.”