Chapter 18 #2
Ophelia nodded, and ran her sleeve beneath her nose, sniffling. “No, I know, I just… We’re really doing this?” She looked up at him, and he cocked his brow, the heat in his eyes flushing her cheeks.
“If it were warmer and had we not pressing business to attend to, I’d take great pleasure in convincing you of the sincerity of my overture,” he rumbled, leaning close to kiss her softly, then offering her his arm. “Alas, it will have to wait. If you’ll accompany me, Ms. Diamondé?”
“Anywhere and everywhere, Mr. Sperry,” she breathed, her head light.
He led her around the library to a large, forest green truck parked at the curb with a “Caldwick and Sons” logo on its side.
Chase sat in the driver’s seat and Jena was beside him.
Neither one of them looked happy. Great.
Ophelia frowned, sure that was somehow her fault.
Gideon opened one of the rear passenger doors and helped her up onto the running board, into the back.
Ophelia paused. “Do you think they can drop us off at town hall? I need to file my part of the joint status report.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Gideon said. “I’ve already been in contact with Judge Carey and filed a motion to dismiss the civil case and recommended criminal conspiracy charges be filed against the Vampire Court.”
Ophelia blinked at him. “What? When?”
“Whilst being chauffeured about town earlier.” She stared at him and he shrugged. “I dictated most of it on my phone last night while you were sleeping. It was just a matter of polishing the transcription. Now hop in, it’s freezing out here,” he smirked, helping her in.
Ophelia slid across the bench seat, her mind whirling with a very bad feeling that that wouldn’t be the end of it.
Gideon climbed in beside her, and she wriggled under his arm, taking comfort while she could.
Everything about today was completely overwhelming, and she was positive that it was only going to get worse.
Gideon shouldered into the apartment above the Witchery balancing a drink tray from Cups and breathed a sigh of relief that Chase’s banging from earlier was finally at quits. The man stepped from the kitchen with a hammer in his hand and relieved Gideon of the to-go bag.
“Windows are back it, but it’s gonna take a while for the place to heat up.
” He set the bag on the worn kitchen table, then glanced into the living room with its circle of mismatched chairs and couches.
Ophelia stood at one of the long windows, chewing a nail as she stared out into the distance.
A smile teased Gideon’s lips. As ridiculous as those bunny pajama bottoms were, she looked absolutely adorable in them, and would no doubt be enraged should he say so.
His smile grew wider, so very tempted.
“I haven’t gotten in there yet,” Chase continued, breaking Gideon from his inappropriate musings, “but restoring that fireplace has definitely moved up the list.”
“How about you shoot for finishing the kitchen first?” Jena said from behind him, pulling the last of the plastic sheeting down and rolling it up.
The denuded walls behind it weren’t an improvement.
Strips of tile had been pried from the surface and decidedly unappealing squiggles of yellowed cement scored over what looked like a 1970s conglomeration of wallpaper samples.
“Aggie will have a bird if you leave it like this.”
“She’s gonna have a bird about something anyway, at least that’d be valid,” Chase muttered, then glanced at Gideon and grabbed one of the coffees from the tray he’d set next to the bag. “Aggie’s Jena’s aunt. She’s…difficult.”
“No, she’s a raging bitch,” Jena said, then sighed. “Well, at least she has been lately.”
“Maybe a couple of days with Gorman mellowed her out.”
Jena looked at Chase like he was addled. “You’ve met him, right?”
“You never know.” He shrugged.
“Unfortunately, I do, and that’s not happening.
Get rid of this for me, will you?” she asked, handing him the wad of sheeting, then claiming a cup from the tray that was more confection than coffee.
“I’ve gotta start getting ready for the coven.
They’ll be here in an hour. Oh, hey, can you grab that picture of my dad for Gideon?
It’s in the grimoire.” Chase grunted and stuffed the wad under his arm, trundling off to dispose of it.
“Ophelia, can you get the tea service out for me?”
“Sure.” She turned away from the windows and scooted past Gideon to help. “Where is it?”
“Bottom of the cabinet.” Jena pointed, sipping from her cup. “If I bend over that low, I’m not getting back up.”
“And what are your plans with the coven?” Gideon asked, taking his own beverage before leaning in the doorway.
Jena huffed a lock of dark hair from her eyes and grabbed a kettle from the stove. “To pick Matilda’s brain. If anyone has something nasty up her sleeve, it’s her. It’s getting the rest of the coven to agree on it that’ll be the issue.”
“How many of these do you need?” Ophelia asked, setting cups and saucers on the counter behind her.
“All of them, and everything else that’s in there.” She frowned at one. “Damn it. So much for the sheeting. It’s all gonna need to be washed.”
“Wasn’t Matilda the one who changed Chambers into a weasel?” Gideon asked.
“Among other things. Shit, that reminds me.” The little witch left the kettle by the sink and went to the refrigerator.
She rooted around for a moment before pulling out a gallon-sized baggie with a furry corpse inside it.
“I asked Kelsey to have Tom drop it off on his way back to the fire station. He’s going to rally what’s left of our local emergency services after the dragon had its way with them,” she said, depositing the macabre package onto the butcher block island.
Gideon stared at the baggie. “Dare I ask what you plan to do with the remains?”
Jena shrugged. “I dunno, but I’m pretty sure whatever it is will work best at room temperature.
Chambers bit my dad before he died, and there’s blood all over his muzzle.
I was thinking a tracking spell at the time, but now I’m wondering if maybe we can do one of those auric reconstructions Liam was talking about. ”
Gideon’s brow quirked, intrigued by the possibility. “If you do, record it.”
“Yeah, I can do that. Chase gave me the run down on the nexuses. Do you really think the node will be able to create more gargoyles?” she asked, filling up the kettle and then emptying it into a large iron cauldron on the stove.
“Able to, yes; inclined to is a different matter altogether,” he muttered, turning at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. The door opened and a tall, thin woman in oversized sunglasses and a tapestried, fur-lined cape pushed through it, laden with shopping bags.
“I don’t care how romantic your mother thinks the Crabby Cleft is. I’m not eating at some place that sounds like it’s gonna have an STD sampler.” She swept off her glasses and stopped dead in the doorway, her gaze fixed on Gideon. “Who the hell are you?”
His nose twitched, the scent of sidhe thick in his nostrils as he returned her glower, wondering how she fit into things.
“That’s Gideon,” Jena yelled from the kitchen. “Be nice.”
“That’s entirely up to him.” Her eyes narrowed at Jena’s snort, and she stepped aside, letting an extremely disheveled imp similarly laden with packages into the room after her.
“Where do you want these, Aggie?” he groused.
Ah. Aggie. The difficult aunt.
“Bedroom,” she said, tonguing a cheek whilst looking Gideon up and down and making it a point not to come any closer to him. His lip twitched. Oh yes, she’d had dealings with his kind before.
“How was your trip?” Jena asked, oblivious to the potential for violence about to unfold.
“Aside from the company, not bad. Weather was shit, but since someone,” she called over her shoulder, her eyes still on Gideon, “couldn’t be bothered to spring for an all-inclusive resort, that’s to be expected.”
“Springing for it wasn’t the problem, you getting on a plane was,” the imp shot back as he returned to retrieve her packages. “You want the wine in the fridge?”
“Of course I want the wine in the fridge. I also wanna know what a grotesque’s doing standing in my living room when he should be on his own damned side of the ocean.”
The imp froze, his mouth agape.
Gideon couldn’t quite swallow his grin. “Is my presence making you uncomfortable?”
“Glencarn, 1498,” she spat. “What do you think?”
He winced, all frivolity forgotten. “My apologies.”
“Fat lot of good that does now.”
“I’m sorry, what’s going on?” Ophelia asked, joining him in the doorway.
Aggie did a double take at her, then threw up her hands. “And we’ve got a vampire in the kitchen. I leave you two alone for three days. Couldn’t you have just thrown a house party?”
“Who says this isn’t?” Jena asked, batting her lashes at the woman.
“What’s Glencarn, 1498?” Ophelia asked again, looking between them.
“It’s where the Great Massacre of Feeding Hills occurred,” Gideon muttered.
“During an unseelie incursion for their node, the grotesque’s general was struck down, severing ties to his recruits.
Without his influence to stabilize them, they went mad, slaughtering the entire town and several surrounding villages. ”
“Shit, that can happen?” Chase asked, coming in from the back.
“Here you go, man,” he said, handing Gideon a photograph as he squeezed past him to get into the kitchen.
It was of a smug dark-haired man that looked far too much like Jena not to a blood relation.
Gideon pulled his phone and snapped a picture of it and the name scrawled on the back, then texted it to Renard.
“That did happen,” Aggie said, shaking a finger. “And him—them—being here is just asking for trouble.”
Jena rolled her eyes. “Well, unless you’ve ‘seen’ anything you want to share, you better take that up with karma, because I’m pretty sure it and the node were fishing for him when it brought Ophelia here and bound her.”
“Oh!” Ophelia stood up straighter. “You’re the one who gets visions. You haven’t seen anything about tonight, have you?”
The woman sniffed. “If I had, things would certainly make more sense now,” she said, glancing askance at Gideon. “Unfortunately, a grotesque’s immunity to magic makes what the sneaky bastards are involved in one of the few things I can’t see.”
He snorted. “I can assure you that as long as I’m bound to the node’s service, I won’t be responsible for any harm that might befall you—without being given just cause.”
“As far as you know.” She scowled, then turned to scowl at the imp still standing by the door. She tugged the bottle of wine from his hand. “Don’t you need to go check in with Mommy Dearest?”
“How could I leave without thanking you for such a delightful time?” he simpered, taking her hand and slobbering all over it.
Jena made a gagging sound from the kitchen.
Gideon wholeheartedly agreed: the display was untoward.
He joined Ophelia at the sink, trading the photo for a towel and began to dry as she washed dishes.
“So, will you be joining us for tea?” Ophelia asked, handing him a saucer.
“As much as it pains me to decline, no. I need to get out to the ruins and scout the area where Jena thinks the portal is. If I can close it, I will. If I can’t, I need to get the lay of the land, and the sooner that’s done the better.”
“I can take you out,” Chase said around a mouthful of his sandwich. “I have to touch base with Liam and see what he and the pack’ve come up with. He said something about needing me to handle the Westside weres. Apparently, some of those assholes aren’t on board without his dad calling the shots.”
Jena shook her head. “I really hate that for him.”
“Pack politics suck,” Chase sighed. “Anyway, man, whenever you’re ready.”
Ophelia turned to Gideon, anxiety etched across her face. “You’ll be careful?”
He set down the saucer and tipped her face up to his. “There is no future in which I’m not at your side. I won’t allow it.”
“Shit, even I almost believe that,” Aggie muttered, strolling in to grab a wine glass from the cabinet. “Now hop to. I need to get into that drawer.”
Gideon frowned at the sidhe witch, then kissed Ophelia. “Stay here.”
She puffed out her cheeks and nodded, wringing her hands as she turned back to the sink, and Gideon followed Chase from the room.