32. Its Not Me, Its You
32
IT'S NOT ME, IT'S YOU
JADE
W alking out of the bedroom, I find myself in a cozy, small, unfamiliar house made of stone and mud, like an ancient building with old-world plaster.
Magic seems to flow around my body, caressing me, and I suspect we are in the fae realm.
The strong metallic scent of blood fills my senses. When did I get a detective nose like that? I suppose being a supe comes with its perks. Although I don’t know if smelling blood is a perk.
I hear the thud of someone being punched. When I come to the end of the hallway, I discover Maxum, Flint, and Arran towering over Rob who’s been strapped to a chair.
With all that’s happened with Osen’s return to the living, I’d almost forgotten about that asshole. I’m glad I put on Calder’s shirt before I left the bedroom. Not that Rob hasn’t seen all my merchandise, but I’d rather not have his eyes on me again, especially like that. Besides, I’m sure my possessive monsters would throw a fit.
Maxum swings his head around to eye me entering the room. His wild gaze travels up and down my body, lingering on my exposed legs.
He blocks Rob’s line of sight to me. Not that Rob is even aware of his surroundings.
Maxum grabs a long robe and wraps it around my shoulders. Where the hell did he materialize that from? “I don’t want you here for this. Though if you insist, we don’t want him seeing your body.”
I snicker to myself. Apparently, even showing my legs is too much for them to bear.
Maxum steps out of the way as I tie the robe at my waist and move closer.
The torture session is set up in the kitchen area. Tiled floors will make it easier to clean up the mess. My eyes scan Rob for his various injuries. His clothes are in scraps, dangling off him. He’s missing chunks of skin on his legs and arms. One eye is swollen shut, and a couple of fingers have been cut off. His flesh is marbled with fresh bruises and lined with cuts and claw marks.
His head hangs listlessly to the side, unconscious.
I study the damage already done, and I don’t feel one ounce of sympathy for him. In fact, I hope he suffers a bit more for all the damage he’s caused. The pacifist in me is not reporting for duty, not for him. He hurt me for years, more than I ever knew. He had a shifter warlock masquerading as my pet. He used me, shoving ghosts into my mind and interrogating them through me. Abused me while I was under his spell, convincing me I was worthless and unlovable. Then he stole my magic to create dark spells to kill Osen and who knows how many others.
Arran’s hands have shifted into his werewolf claws and his canines are poking out from his mostly human face. Serky is fighting to make an appearance and slaughter my ex.
On the surface, Flint appears calm, but through our bond his rage seeps through. I know he’s trying to protect me, but he needn’t worry about that. My rage is brewing to a pitch-black cup of revenge the longer I’m in this room.
I remember how Rob couldn’t just let me go when I broke up with him and moved on and started dating Arran. Instead, he almost killed me in my home when trying to exorcise Osen. When I ran, he hunted me down in the alleyway, intending to expel Osen again and hurting Calder. Then he came for me at the lake house to abduct me, almost killing Flint.
There will be no mercy for Rob and no letting him go. He won’t stop. It’s us or him. He doesn’t deserve a chance. He wouldn’t give me one.
“Have you got anything out of this douche canoe?” I ask, my voice deadly cold.
“A few glimpses,” Maxum answers, glaring at Rob. “He has strong mental walls. I’ll give him that.”
“We’re trying to break them down,” Flint informs me. “If Maxum pushes too hard, it will melt Rob’s brain.”
“We might only get one answer if I do that,” Maxum adds, resting his hands on his hips.
Arran snarls at Rob, and I pick up that my wolf shifter is perfectly on board with melting my ex’s brain.
I drag over a chair, place it about ten feet in front of Rob, and sit down, waiting for the show to resume.
“This will not be pretty, Heartstone,” Flint warns.
“I understand.”
We wait until Rob is just coming around. From behind, Maxum brackets Rob’s head between his hands, his eyes gaze off to the middle distance as he dives into Rob’s memories.
“If he wakes, ask him questions,” Maxum instructs, hands still in place, but his lip is curled in disgust at having to touch the bastard.
Rob blinks his eyes open and lifts his head. His eyes land on me instantly, and he glowers. “I recognized you were trash as soon as I met you.”
Flint and Arran growl, but I hold up my hand for them to stop.
“I knew you were about as useful as a cup of piss in a shitstorm, but you used magic to make me put up with your flaccid… personality . Besides, I wasn’t the one pursuing the whole fucked up relationship now, was I? So what does that make you?”
“You think you’re better than me? You’re a mutt, an abomination.”
“It’s sure funny how worthless you claim I am, but you needed me for your little world domination scheme.”
“Useless other than as a weapon.”
“Weapons are often more important than those who wield them. You think Galiana will be upset when you’re dead? No, she’ll probably be relieved that a problem has been taken off her hands… well, other than losing Osen’s magic. You’re nothing but a pathetic pawn to her. A replaceable one at that.”
“Shut your whore mouth,” Rob spits out.
He gets a solid punch to the gut for that outburst from Flint.
I sense Rob is so filled with rage and focused on arguing with me that his walls are dropping, so I question him, hoping to make him think about the things we’d like to know.
“Do you believe Galiana was going to keep you around after she had me in her clutches?”
“She’s figured out how to claim your powers permanently. Then she’ll throw your dead body out with the garbage.”
“And then what?” I demand. “She kills off all the supes? What’s the point of this madness?”
“They’re stealing our magic, so we’re going to end them before they end us.”
“We aren’t stealing magic, you fool,” Flint growls.
“We both know that isn’t true. You think we didn’t hear about what happened in the fae realm? We know that was just the beginning of the fae’s plot to control all the magic in the realms. So we found a way for us to do it too.”
“Stealing Jade’s ability.” Flint glances over at me.
“Fight fire with fire.” Rob looks smug for someone with one foot dangling in the grave.
“How many others know about me?” I ask, worrying that I might never get to rest.
Rob bites his lip and refuses to speak, but I can tell by Maxum’s raised eyebrow he’s got an answer.
Then the question that has been burning in the back of my mind rises to the surface. “How did you and Galiana find me? I thought I was hidden by the pendant.”
“You’re so stupid.” Rob laughs. “And so was your traitorous mother.”
His insults bounce right off me. Why should he rile me with his hateful words? His actions prove he’s only worth the time to make sure he’s dead soon.
It irritates me that he knew my true origins before I did.
Great job, abuela. Ugh. It was so hard to get that she wasn’t my grandmother at all. And although she was my biological mother, she wasn’t really my mom. Even my sister didn’t do a great job being a mom.
I sometimes wonder how I can be a kind and loving person when I didn’t have a good example. Can’t say I feel very loving right now.
“It’s in your nature, your soul, to be loving,” Flint says through our mental link, reading my thoughts like a book. “Sometimes it isn’t nurture that makes us who we end up being.”
“Well, I want blood now,” I say aloud for Arran and Maxum to hear. “It pisses me off what this bastard and Galiana did to me. And they hurt you guys.”
“It’s your revolting, violent fae and demon blood that make you a savage,” Rob says.
I laugh heartily at that. “I wasn’t a savage until you fucked with me. You prove witches and warlocks can easily be revolting and violent. Savage.” I bite back a burst of fury from the injustices I’ve endured. “Do you think forcing a spell on me to be your girlfriend was anything less than sexual assault? And you call these guys monsters?”
“Believe me, I didn’t enjoy being with you other than laughing about how I’d stolen your power.”
I stand up, my limit reached with his bullshit. It stings even if I don’t want it to. I wish I had thick enough skin that the thought of him touching me didn’t make me want to scrub my flesh from my bones. “I’m done here. In case there’s any doubt, you were so vile that I dumped your ass even while under your dark magic spell.”
Rob opens his mouth with a rebuttal.
“We can kill him now,” Maxum announces.
Rob’s flustered, red face pales instantly. “You need me,” he pleads to stall his fate.
“I never needed you,” I snarl in his face.
Maxum grips Rob’s head, and Rob screams.
“Keep your psychic guard up to block his ghost,” Flint warns.
Rob’s eyes bulge with pain and turn glassy as the life drains from his body. For a moment, I’m tempted to destroy his soul, but I don’t feel like it’s my place to go that far. I sense karma will come for him in the afterlife.
I see a gray wisp slip into the astral plane and beyond.
Finally, I’m free of him, but I know there’s at least one more person we need to eliminate before we can relax.
“Are you okay?” Calder comes up behind me from the bedroom, his hand landing gently on my lower back.
Osen is right beside us, glaring at the warlock who stole everything from him.
“Not yet. But I’ll be better when we take out Galiana.” My jaw is set with my determination. Then I soften as I look at Osen. “You?”
He nods. “We can talk later.” He presses a kiss on my temple.
“Jade’s right,” Maxum says as he washes Rob’s blood off his hands in the kitchen sink. “We need to cut off the head of the snake.”
“Did you get any intel?” Osen asks as he walks up to Rob’s corpse and shoves his chair over, so the body crashes to the floor with a wet thump.
“A bit.” Maxum frowns, drying his hands on a dainty tea towel. “The good news is that it doesn’t appear that Galiana trusted many people with her plan to use Jade’s magic. There is one other witch I saw briefly flash in Rob’s mind. Not even Floofers knew all that was going on with you, just the mediumship, not the unique powers.”
“But how did they even find Jade in the first place?” Arran demands, his werewolf quelled, relaxing with the death of the warlock.
“When you asked him about that, I saw your books,” Maxum says to me. “Do you know why that might be?”
I shake my head, but I think about his question. How could my books lead them to me?
“Even before I met Rob, I had weird dreams. So I was probably seeing a ghost’s memories. Maybe I wrote about something that happened in real life? But even then, I’d be shocked if witches are reading smut by an indie author. Besides, it isn’t like I just wrote verbatim what happened in my dreams. Or… I don’t think I did.”
“We can’t rule that out completely.” Maxum gives me a grin and a wink. “It’s a great excuse to take the time to read your books like I’ve been meaning to.”
It’s so weird it makes me jittery to think of him reading my work. Maybe because it’s a whole different kind of vulnerability. Authors pour their souls into their worlds, often giving up a normal life. And for those keen enough to read between the lines, they can see past the words and right inside an author’s being—their wounds, healed and unhealed.
I worry Maxum won’t like my writing… that he won’t like the parts that are me.
“Time to take out the trash.” Osen bends to drag Rob’s body out of the house.
“No,” Calder snaps, catching his arm. “Go. Rest. We can deal with this.”
Osen grumbles, but takes my fingers in his and gently guides me back to the bedroom. “You could use some rest too, sweet monster.”