Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Caspian
I fought the spell. Fought it until my own bones ground against it, and it held me down like ten demons sitting on my chest.
Then something snapped, thin and high, somewhere behind my ears.
I was off the pavement before I'd finished standing. Shifted, and went up into the dark over the Bywater with Tinker Bell’s scent already in my nose — soot and copper and that green lightning smell, burned into me since the church.
North and west, out past the parish line. Over black water and cypress and nothing anybody had built. She was a thread and I stayed on it.
But it wasn’t just Tinker Bell I was tracking. I was tracking my sister too.
Wendy's hair had been white. Loose, the way our mother used to wear hers.
I put that down and flew.
Lumina Glade came up under me and the old Saint Louis Cathedral stood in the middle of it with the rose window blown out, and the grass in front of it was churned to mud where people had landed and where somebody had run barefoot and been caught.
I dropped and shifted and took the whole clearing in three strides.
Her scent stopped. Not thinned. Not faded off into the trees the way a trail goes when somebody walks away from you. It stopped, in a line, a body's width across, and past that line there was nothing at all — no Tinker Bell, no Pan, no Wendy, no smell of magic.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I put my fist through a bent oak, splintering the wood again and again until there was nothing left worth hitting.
I'd lost all three of them.
I should have made her let me in. Not asked. Made her. Pan and Wendy had taken her back to the Elder Dimension and I had no way through without magic, and I paced that clearing like the answer was going to come up out of the mud.
He'd taken her out of her own bed. In her pajamas, barefoot, in December.
I shifted and went back to the Bywater.
Her townhome was warded to the frame. I tried the front, the garage, the balcony door, and every one of them pushed back at me like a hand on my chest. Pan had a witch. I didn't.
That was the whole problem, and there was only one fix for it.
I called Enzo. He picked up on the first ring.
"Caspian." Short. Like he already knew it was bad.
"I'm in trouble."
He didn't say anything. He never does. He waited as I quickly told him what happened—the church, the shard, the tree, the sidewalk, all of it.
And I hoped to God Angelo wasn't standing next to him, because I'd been keeping clear of that room at Crimson Stakes for a long time and I'd just given him a reason.
The silence after was worse than anything Angelo ever did to me. Angelo yelled. Angelo took something off you. Enzo just went quiet, and I sat in misery, waiting for him to respond. My heart banged against my ribs, echoing in my ears.
He finally spoke. “Alice is back in town for the holidays. Tinker Bell trained her. She'll get you through the door." As always, his voice was controlled, steady.
I'd met Alice once. Never met her mate — Darius Acosta, who'd been trapped in the Elder Dimension after the war and somehow wasn't anymore. The story was that she'd gotten him out.
Something brightened inside me, chasing away my dark thoughts. I breathed easier.
Alice had done it. Somebody had done it, once, and she was in this city tonight.
I stopped pacing on that dark street and stood still for the first time since the sidewalk.
"Thank you."
"Stop Pan." Two words, and he hung up before I could answer.
He never threatened me. He never had. But that wasn’t the same as him not being disappointed.
I would stop Pan. Either he’d end up buried six feet under or end up back in his cell at the Hollows. I didn’t much care which.
A black Corvette sped down the street and slammed into Tinker Bell’s driveway, tires screaming. It spelled pissed off.
The driver’s door ripped open and I lost him.
That’s the only honest way to put it—I looked at the driver’s seat and then a man with long curly black hair was standing at the passenger door with his hand on the handle.
My vampire eyes hadn’t caught a single frame in between.
Definitely Darius Acosta. Golden Demon. A runner.
I’d heard about him but had never seen him in action.
Then the woman got out, and I made myself stand there and want something from a stranger.
Blond, green-eyed, in a baggy Legacy Academy T-shirt and jeans she'd clearly pulled on in the dark. She'd been in bed too. Enzo had called her and she'd come, for a woman I'd been paid to watch and hadn't.
That was going to be the first thing she learned about me.
Her eyes locked on mine. “You’re Caspian Hook?”
“I am.” I flashed her my most winning smile. “And you’re Alice Acosta.”
She gave me an icy stare. “Nice job protecting Tinker Bell.” She wasn’t Angelo Santi, but her voice sounded exactly like him.
I gnashed my teeth.
Darius put his hand on her shoulder. “Easy, Tigress.”
“Don’t patronize me, Darius.” She knocked his hand away. “He was supposed to protect her and lost her. Flirting with another woman?”
My reputation definitely preceded me. I bristled. “No. I offered her my help and she refused it. I was forced to stay outside and stakeout her house. A mistake, I know.”
Darius gave me a sheepish smile. “Tinker Bell likes to work alone. Asking for help doesn’t come easy for her.” He stretched out his hand. “Acosta. Darius.”
At least he wasn’t acting like he wanted me to walk the plank. I shook his hand. “I’ve heard of you.”
“He’s not a player.”
Darius kissed her cheek. “Calm down.”
Alice sighed and folded her arms. “Fine.” Her face softened. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about her.”
She should be. Pan was notorious for what he did with women.
“Why do you want to get into her townhome?” She studied me as if I had some ulterior motive for getting inside like going through her underwear drawer.
“Pan might have left some clue where he’d taken her. When they left, I wasn’t sure they had the shard from the Christmas Star. He probably did. But maybe they didn’t find it. It could help us find her.”
She headed for the garage and set both hands flat against the door.
"She keyed these to her own blood." Alice tipped her head, listening to something I couldn't hear. "Which is rude, honestly."
"Can you get through it?"
Please say yes. If not, all of this was for nothing.
"She taught me the ward. She never once thought about who else that meant knew it." Alice flexed her fingers against the metal. "Quae docuisti, memini. Manus discipulae. Aperi."
What you taught me, I remember. The hand of your student. Open.
The whole front of the house shivered. Something let go with a sound I felt in my teeth instead of hearing, and the garage door rolled up on its own, slow like it would have for her.
Alice was already ducking under it. "She's going to be furious."
Last time she was furious she cursed one of Enzo’s enforcers and turned him into a beast. You didn’t want to make this woman angry. I had no intention of becoming some damn ugly monster.
I shrugged. “She'll be alive."
Alice led me into the townhome. “I’m not sure she’ll see it that way.”
Antiques, tastefully done. Leather furniture. Hardwood floors she'd kept up. Garland along the mantel and a wreath on the hall door, and the tree in the front window still lit, the same tree I'd sat outside and watched her walk behind.
I'd expected incense. Magic symbols, weird statues, something. It was like walking into a librarian's house instead of a witch's.
There were spell books. Nothing else that said who she was.
Bong. Bong. Bong.
A grandfather clock was against the far wall, tall and dark, still running, ticking away in an empty house while she was in another world. I was drawn to it.
We had one in the hall when I was a boy. Wendy used to count the strikes out loud. The clock chimed midnight. The witching hour. Our clock had a secret compartment behind the face. Maybe hers did too.
I ran my fingers along the side and smiled. Just like ours. I pressed the button and the clock came open. The ticking stopped with it, and the whole house went quiet.
Nothing. Dust and a dead spider and the smell of old wood.
I shut the case. The pendulum caught and swung and the ticking picked up again like it had never stopped.
Darius came up next to me. “I checked her bedroom and her office and didn’t find anything.”
We’d only been in the townhome a couple of minutes, but Darius would have been thorough. He moved fast.
“I think I found it,” Alice said as she stood in front of the Christmas tree.
She was good. Damn good.
“Where?” I hurried into the living room.
Darius got there before me and stood next to Alice.
Alice pointed to the top of the tree. “There. That’s the shard from the Christmas Star.”
Tinker Bell was smart. Even if Pan or maybe even Wendy was looking at her angel tree topper, they probably would have missed it. An angel was holding what looked like a candle and it was bright. There was no light underneath it.
Darius reached for it and I grabbed his wrist. “Don’t touch it. You’ll burn yourself.”
Alice held an empty box. “Put it in here. This will keep us from being burned or us absorbing the magic.”
Darius frowned. “Absorb?”
“I researched the shard,” Alice said. “If you touch it, some of the magic slips into your system. It makes you powerful, but at a cost.”
I thought of Tinker Bell, her eyes, the burn on her hand. “What cost?”
“If she doesn’t release it…”
That always meant something bad. Always. “What do you mean release?”
“Her body will slowly burn from the inside out. A white aura will illuminate around her, burning brighter and brighter until she’s consumed.”
Fuck. She was going to turn into a human candle.
“How long does this take?”
“It’s Christmas, Hook. Christmas Eve is when the Christmas Star burns the brightest.”
Not what I wanted to hear. “How does she get rid of the Star’s magic?”
“By doing something good. Can’t be used for anything bad.”
Stopping Pan. Keeping him in the Elder Dimension. “Would sealing the portal work?”
She frowned. “Possibly. But I’m not sure that’s enough.”
Not enough? What would big enough be?
A Christmas miracle. Like saving my sister. Maybe the Star's magic could destroy the thing inside her.
I didn't think that was possible. God, I hoped I was wrong.