Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
“You can drop me off here.” I motion to a hotel.
“Are you sure?” Marie asks, slowing to a stop at a light.
“Yes,” I tell her. “Xavier and Theo are still downtown doing something for work.” We just got back into Charlotte, and I’ve been ignoring the slew of text messages that came through my phone.
Most are from my brothers wondering where the hell I am.
A couple are from Mabel. One is from Delphi, telling me about another disastrous man she matched with on a dating app.
And a couple are from Xavier.
He’s surprisingly calm, which unnerves me for some reason.
“I’m going to head to my hotel and then fly home in the morning,” Marie tells me.
“This may be a silly question,” I say as the car starts moving again when the light changes. Marie heads toward the hotel where Xavier and the rest of the coalition are meeting. “We can’t just jump through portals to get from one place to another?”
“Technically, yes,” she says, “but it’s prohibited by the Grand Coven. It’s very dangerous. A door to a Covenstead opens to a very specific place using very concentrated magic. Opening a portal in Charlotte and trying to walk through it and emerge in New Orleans isn’t that simple.”
“What could happen?”
“The most common answer is…we don’t know,” Marie tells me. “Which is why it was banned. Witches have opened portals and stepped through, only to never be seen again.” She shakes her head, eyes wide with fear. “Where they went, what happened to them—nobody knows. And I mean that quite literally.”
I lean back, my mind immediately filling with possibilities.
What if you stepped into some endless void and got stuck there forever?
Would you be suspended in some kind of animation for centuries?
Would you die of starvation? Maybe there’s no oxygen wherever you end up, and you’re dead in a matter of minutes.
“I think I agree with the Grand Coven on this one,” I say. “Even though I don’t actually know what the Grand Coven is.”
“Think of it as the vampire council, but for witches.”
“Makes sense.”
Marie puts the car in park, then leans over and gives me a hug.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she tells me. “Don’t feel pressured to give me a decision one way or another, but promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I will.” And I know I’m not only going to think about it. I’m going to obsess over it. Probably for the rest of my life, if I’m being honest. I hug her back and get out of the car. I walk into the hotel lobby acting like I know exactly where I’m going.
But once I’m inside, I stop and send a group text to Mabel and my brothers, letting them know I’m back in Charlotte and I’m okay.
Then I silence my phone and shove it into my purse.
The receptionist behind the desk eyes me curiously; I’m fairly certain she knows who I am.
And she definitely knows Xavier is somewhere in one of the meeting rooms.
I take a seat on a fancy tufted sofa, giving myself just a few minutes to collect my thoughts and slow my racing heart. I half expect Xavier to come flying out of the elevator, grab my hands, look me in the eyes, and tell me it was stupid and dangerous to go with Marie.
But he doesn’t.
I take a slow breath, get to my feet, and walk back out of the hotel.
It’s like I’m moving on autopilot, but sitting still only makes everything worse.
As long as I keep moving, I can keep the nagging thoughts at bay.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just let my intuition guide me.
Maybe Marie was onto something with that.
I don’t stop walking until I get to the garden where Xavier and I had our engagement photos taken. I slow at the entrance and just stand there, letting my mind wander back. And then I start laughing, probably sounding completely insane if anyone is nearby.
“And I thought my life was complicated then,” I say out loud, shaking my head at myself.
I step into the garden and hold my hand out in front of me, trying to summon a ball of energy and make it hover in the air the same way Marie did.
It takes a few tries, but eventually I get it.
I stare at the little ball of energy, going solely off my intuition and what feels right.
I can feel myself pulling energy from the air around me, and the ball grows brighter.
I lower my hand. It stays there, hovering above me.
I take my purse off and reach into the leather bag containing the notebook.
I pull it out and flip through the names over and over again.
Then I close it and hold it against my chest, hoping I’ll get some sort of vision or something that tells me what to do.
Instead of a vision, another familiar feeling comes over me.
I open my eyes and see Xavier standing only a few yards away. His brows are pinched slightly together with concern, but his face lights up when our eyes meet.
My heart skips a beat in my chest, and I get to my feet, setting the notebook down on the bench beside me.
“Hi,” I say.
He comes over and wraps his arms around me.
I melt into his embrace, hooking my hands around his shoulders and leaning into him. His cool, firm body is the pillar of strength I need to stay upright at this exact moment, and we just stand there quietly holding each other.
“I walked through a portal and visited a Covenstead in New Orleans,” I tell him, leaning back just enough to look into his beautiful blue eyes.
“I think I’m beyond the point of asking if you’re serious,” he says, his lips curving into a slight smile, “because I’m pretty sure you are.”
“Serious as a heart attack.”
“What is a Covenstead?”
“To be honest, I don’t really know how to explain it.” I think for a second. “It’s like a little hidden town, I guess. There’s a school and a bar and a graveyard and maybe some houses, but it was dark, so I couldn’t see too far. Plus, Marie didn’t want to keep me out too late.”
Xavier just looks at me, unmoving, for several seconds, eyes holding back emotions he’ll never admit to me. Or maybe himself. It’s a fear of him not being able to offer me what I fully deserve.. Then he asks, “Do you want to go back?”
“I do,” I say honestly. “I want to learn how to use my powers fully. I want to be around other witches. I want to know more about my family. And most importantly, I want to learn how to trap Vaelric again.”
“Okay,” he says simply.
“But I don’t want to tonight,” I add. “I’m tired.”
Xavier just nods, and I can tell by his stoic expression that he’s trying hard to keep his emotions at bay.
His hands slide down my body before he shrugs off his suit jacket and drapes it around my shoulders.
It isn’t chilly at all tonight, and there’s no humidity, making it rather pleasant. But the mosquitoes are terrible.
“This is neat,” he says apprehensively, poking at the little ball of light hovering beside our heads. His fingertip burns when it touches the bright energy and then instantly heals. He looks at his finger, then back at the light. “It feels like sunlight,” he tells me.
“Sunlight has a specific feeling?”
“Yes,” he says. “And it’s probably something I can’t explain either.”
He holds his hand beneath the floating ball of energy. The light itself doesn’t seem to affect him. It only hurts when he physically touches it.
“You know, the first time we were here, I hated you,” I say, looking around the garden.
“You can still hate me,” he says. “Like I told you, you just have to be alive to do it.”
“I probably should.” I look into his blue eyes, feeling my breath hitch in my chest. “But I don’t. I can’t. Not even if I tried.”
“Then try harder.” His eyes cloud over, reflecting the same angst I’m feeling.
“It’s not possible,” I whisper, and Xavier brings a hand up, fingers slowly trailing up my arm, causing me to shiver.
“And I’d be a hypocrite if I did.” I look down for a second.
“I didn’t want to live without Antonio. I don’t want to have to suffer the loss of my brother.
” I look back up at him. “I would say we’re all human, but I know you’d counter that.
” I’m trying to inject even the smallest bit of relief into an otherwise heavy conversation.
“There’s a part of humanity in us that never dies, I suppose.” He steps closer, his fingers going to my chin as he gently tips my head up and kisses me. Tingles make their way down my spine, and I step closer, needing to feel him fully pressed against me.
“I am sorry,” he says softly. “Not for what I did, but for everything that’s going on. I will never regret choosing you, Florence.” Tears well in my eyes, and I wrap my arms tighter around him. Xavier picks me up and carries me over to the bench where I’d just been sitting.
Pushing his tongue into my mouth, he holds me tight against him, with my breasts crushing against his hard chest. Heat floods through me and any anger I was feeling melts away.
Xavier’s body is cold to the touch, but his lips are soft and warm, probably from my own body heat. Any resolve I had crumbles at my feet, and I want nothing more than to relent to Xavier and get swept up and lost in bliss.
“Wren,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against mine. I grind my hips against him, straddling him on the bench. His suit jacket falls from my shoulders and onto the ground, but we both ignore it.
Until Xavier, no one has ever held me like this. It goes beyond his vampire strength. Yes, it’s effortless for him to hold me in his lap, but it’s more than that. Part of it doesn’t make sense, and I think that makes it all the more alluring to me.
I’m a witch. He’s a vampire. I was nothing more than a business arrangement to him. Marrying me was a solution to an annoying problem he got stuck with, and now look at where we are.