Chapter 20
Jena huffed the hair from her eyes as she lugged the largest garbage barrel over to the most egregious of the leaks. She’d found smaller containers for some of the others, but it was a losing battle. Chase was right, the roof was in sad shape, and it wasn’t going to last much longer.
At least the stuff the puddle was threatening was safe—unless the ceiling caved in—which is why she’d ended up hauling the entire mess of accumulated crap at the top of the stairs into one of the back rooms. It’d been dry in there, at least for now.
She positioned the barrel beneath the stream, and it immediately started to fill up. How she was going to haul all of this water out of here…her fingers tightened on the barrel’s lip as she hung her head, sniffling. I will not cry, I will not cry…
“Hey, we’ll take care of it,” Chase murmured into her hair, his arms wrapping around her waist.
Jena shrieked, jumping as she turned. “Chase! I didn’t even hear—where did you—you’re okay!” She sobbed, her arms around his neck.
He held her tight as she cried, his lips at the top of her head. “I was worried about you too, but it sounds like everyone else should’ve been. Liam said you kicked some serious ass.”
“That was the node, not me.” She laughed, wiping her eyes. “But the jerks deserved it. God, you’re really here. I was so worried when Kelsey said Malcom had you—” Her lip trembled as she teared up again.
“Shh…it’s okay. I’m here now.” He frowned, eyeing the leaking roof.
“Damn. That greenhouse needs to go, and I have to get staging in here a-sap. Come on, there’s nothing else you can do right now, and I don’t like standing under this.
We can talk downstairs.” He turned toward the steps and stumbled, biting back a cry.
She pulled away to look at him. “You’re hurt? Where? What’s wrong?”
“It’s my frickin’ legs,” he said, picking the fabric of the joggers away from his thighs and grimacing as he hobbled across the room.
“Sweets dosed me with one of her brews, but I’m still not healing like I should.
Long story short, Malcom stuck me in a leyline.
I think all that magic did something to me. ”
Jena glanced at him askance, pretty sure he was right, and she didn’t think that messing with his ability to heal was all of it. “How bad are they?”
He held out his hands, his palms scabby and swollen. “Like this, but worse.”
Gross. Jena drew a glyph over them, speaking an incantation to heal him without thinking twice about it. Magic flared, and the swelling and scabs faded, leaving unmarred, pink skin. It also left her karmic scales at a serious deficit. Crap.
“No kidding. I didn’t know you could do that.” He made a fist, then ran a thumb over his palm. “Why didn’t you use your magic when you sprained your ankle at the falls?”
Her mouth opened and then closed, heat rising to her cheeks. “You didn’t give me the chance—How did you get out of the foundation?”
“Luke dropped a rope.” Chase laughed, a sly grin on his face. “And don’t change the subject. I think you wanted me to rescue you. Admit it.”
“What? Are you—no!” She glowered at his chuckle. “Keep it up, Montgomery.”
“For you? All night, baby,” he said, wincing as he changed his stance to cop a feel and kiss her.
God, his lips…but she was pretty sure this was a classic case of the mind being willing, and the flesh being weak. His body was going to have other plans, and her heart hurt that he was in so much pain.
“Hold on. Let me see what I can do…” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, centering herself.
The node was a bare brush against her consciousness, but there wasn’t a chance she was getting an influx of power from there. Not until she finished the rite. It felt even more agitated than it had earlier. Damn it. She needed to deliver that photo album to Aggie and get on the road.
But first she needed to heal Chase, and if karma and the node were out, that left her with sin-eating.
She wasn’t certain there would be any collective karma hanging around the shop, but the building was old.
It was more likely than not, and if she could use it to help him…
Yeah. No decision necessary. She opened her senses to that side of her power and dark tendrils immediately cloyed at her.
Ugh. Lucky her, she had plenty to choose from.
She turned toward the nearest mess of dark energy, and opened her eyes.
They landed on Aggie’s frickin’ photo album.
Seriously? Jena blew out a breath, feeling a stronger pull from one of the backrooms and quashing it.
That was danker than she wanted to deal with, and if she had to eat-sin, whatever was in the album would be a more digestible bite.
Okay, maybe not, considering the last Easter egg her mother had left for her, and Jena had no doubt this was another. She glanced at Chase—
He was staring at the fireplace, his face white. “D-did you…”
“What? No. I didn’t do anything…but I’m pretty sure you did,” she said, a hand on his back.
He bit his lips and gave a slow nod. “When I was down in that foundation…I don’t…
I can’t…” He huffed out a breath. “Being in my own head isn’t great.
Thinking about stuff—projects—how to do them, all the little steps.
It helps. But how…” He turned to look at her, his big sidhe-blue eyes wide.
“I don’t get it, Jena. I’m a were. I don’t have magic, not like that. ”
Crap. How the heck did she tell him? She reached up to play with the zipper on his hoodie. “Let’s sit for a minute.”
She kept pace with him as he shuffled back to the landing and gingerly lowered himself onto the top step. “Why do I feel like you’re breaking up with me?”
“That might be easier to hear.” She snorted out a laugh at his expression and sat beside him, pulling the album into her lap. Her fingers drummed over its cover. “Chase…Wallace Montgomery isn’t your father.”
He ran a hand over his face. “Christ. Is it shitty that my knee-jerk reaction to that is ‘good?’”
“All things considered, no, but you don’t seem surprised.”
“He said something once.” Chase shook his head, staring into the shadows. “After my…lapse…and the way he looked at me…there’s no way you could look at your own flesh and blood like that, Jena. I knew the man never liked me, but after that…the color of my eyes…no. I’m not surprised.”
She hugged his arm and rested her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
He snorted. “I’m not. It’s a relief. That means I don’t have to play along with any of this pack bullshit.
” He kissed the top of her head and grinned.
“And hell, if I’m mixed, I don’t even have to affiliate.
I’m fucking free. Patrick, my mom…damn, I’m glad she banged someone else.
I’m done with the pack and all the rest of it. ”
“Not quite…” Jena winced. He’d taken that way better than she expected, but was pretty sure this next part would not go over as well.
Chase frowned. “What do you mean?”
“My mom was friends with the Eastside’s alpha. Your uncle, Phil—he had her grimoire. She left a spell on it, and I saw my dad and yours. They’re both unseelie.” She cringed, waiting for him to say something about that.
His brows knit. “Okay…so we have to register and probably get an immigration lawyer—”
“Malcom. Your dad is Malcom,” she blurted and slapped a hand over her mouth.
Chase stared at her, then laughed, shaking his head. “That motherfucker.”
“It’s not funny, Chase, the entire reason he knocked up your mom is so he’d have a first born he can sacrifice to the frickin’ node tonight and create an unseelie mound.”
Chase laughed harder. Shit—was this what happened when weres went feral? No. It was just the shock, right? Jena chewed her lip. She would’ve definitely lost her shit if she’d found out Malcom was her dad. Not that hers wasn’t crappy enough.
“Are you all right?”
“Peachy,” he said. “I am so out of my fucking depth here, Jena. I don’t know how to even begin wrapping my head around that. Goddamn, and I thought figuring out how to zap enough voltage into those turbine foundations was an impossible task.”
“Why would you want to do that?” she asked, her brows knit.
“The rebar in them’s iron. They’re screwing with the leyline and short of yanking the damned things out, the only other solution I can think of is to hit them with enough voltage to degrade the metal in place.”
What? “That’s why it isn’t flowing?” How stupid were they?
“Yeah.” He frowned, any levity gone. “And all that magic’s really not happy about it.”
“No, they wouldn’t be,” Jena murmured, and she needed to get out there. She blew out her cheeks. Right, priorities, Jena. Chase, Aggie, then the node. She flipped open the album, whatever her power was pinging on, it was coming from inside. “Okay, first things first, let’s heal those legs…”
“Damn, those are really old,” Chase said, putting an arm behind her. She nestled against his shoulder. “How’s looking through these going to help?”
“There’s a pocket of sin somewhere in here…
” she murmured. “Witches can’t just cast spells, they use their karma to ‘pay’ for them, I guess you could say.
If I cast too many, or if my intent is ill, my scales would tilt to the deficit, and magic would stop answering when I called.
Taking care of your hands just tapped mine. ”
She chewed her lip, that whole exchange made a lot more sense now that she knew sidhe shades had their hands on the magical spigot.
In life they were notorious for bargaining.
It made total sense that they’d want something for their frickin’ services in death and would cut a practitioner off if they didn’t get it.
Which begged the question, what were they doing with all that accrued karma?
“I don’t understand, what does sin have to do with it?” Chase asked, squinting at a blurry sepia image.