Hearing that makes me feel so good. I wrap myself around him, just to comfort him. Just to let him know that I’m here, and I understand.
“What’s worse . . . ,” he begins, and I feel him tense under me. As if he has more to confess and doesn’t want to. He pauses and then continues on. “What’s worse is that I leaned into that bad reputation. I let it carry me for ages. And after a while, I think I became that person. I told you that I do investment jobs, cursing competitors for clients and tinkering with the stock market, right?” When I nod, he continues. “And I thought that was okay, since I figured it wasn’t hurting anyone. It’s just business, right? Doesn’t matter how ruthless I am, because it’s all business. But I had a client . . .”
His voice trails off again. I stroke his neck, silently encouraging him.
He clears his throat. “I had a client that was a regular of mine. Hired me to screw over product launches of some of his competitors. I thought he was happy with my work, but he killed himself.” Ben’s voice grows rough. “I guess being responsible for driving some of his competitors out of business got to him. And I told myself it wasn’t my fault. That I don’t deal with mental health, and that I couldn’t have known. It’s just, at what point do I become my parents? I didn’t care whose lives I destroyed, because it was just business. My mother didn’t care about anyone but herself, and I don’t want to go down that path.”
“The very fact that you worry about it means that you won’t,” I tell him, soothing. He seems so vulnerable in this moment, it makes me ache to help him.
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple working. “I guess that’s one reason why I’ve been here instead of back in Boston. That, and freckles.”
I look up at him and smile. “Aha. I knew you had the hots for me.” I wiggle atop him. “Was it my fiendish charm? My sexy outfits?”
Ben arches an eyebrow. “Do you even own a sexy outfit?”
“All of my outfits are sexy because I’m in them.”
“I really can’t disagree with that.” A hint of a smile curves his mouth as he studies my face. “Now that you know all of my awful secrets, do you still want to kiss me? Knowing what I did? Who I am? Because I’m sure I’ve cast other questionable things in my lifetime. Five hundred years is a long time. I worry if I start working privately again, I’ll go down that path once more . . .”
“Are you rich?” I ask bluntly. I’ve seen him and Dru toss around all kinds of money, and I suspect I know the answer already.
He frowns down at me. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“Are you rich? Are you wealthy? Are you balling? Do you have bling? Are you—”
Ben covers my mouth. “Please never utter the word ‘bling’ again.” His mouth quirks at me, and he lowers his fingers when I mock-bite them. “I guess I’m well off. I have a couple hundred here and there.”
“Thousand?”
“Million, Reggie. I’d be a terrible businessman if in five hundred years, I only managed to get a few hundred thousand.”
I feel faint at the thought. A couple hundred million? “You’re good, then. Don’t work anymore.”
“Then what do I do with myself?”
I shrug, propping an elbow up on his shoulder to regard him. “Whatever you want to? Buy a private island and lord over it? Write a memoir? Teach?”
His eyes grow vague. “Teach. I wouldn’t mind that. Except I’d need to get a familiar—”
“No, not like that.” I shake my head at him, deliberately avoiding the fact that I’m a little jealous at the thought of him taking a familiar. “Teach people like Penny. People that want desperately to learn but have to wait to apprentice. Teach them basic, small things that will get them prepped to be better familiars, but it’ll give them something to work on while they wait. Penny told me some apprentices wait decades and never get a chance.”
Ben looks thoughtful. “That would be useful. The council would hate it, though. They don’t like change.” He grunts, tilting his head. “Then again, the council doesn’t like me much, either, so I guess it doesn’t matter if I have their approval.”
“See?” I say happily. “There are things you can do without feeling as if you’re going to compromise yourself.”
“Thank you.” The look he gives me is full of gravitas. “I mean that, Reggie. Thank you for talking this through with me. I’ve never really talked to anyone about this kind of thing.”
I nod in understanding. “Because you’d get judged.”
“That, and I don’t want my aunt to know how bad it was for me growing up. And what happened recently . . . She’s the only person that’s ever had an unwavering good opinion of me, and I guess I’ve always protected that.”
I suspect Dru knows more about Ben than she lets on. She’s a sharp cookie, for all that she likes to play dumb at times. She’d adore Ben no matter what he told her. I bite my lip, thinking about poor Dru. “Do you think she’s all right?”
“I called Lisa while you were in the shower. There’s been no change. She’s been working on some scrying spells, too, but she and Jim can’t do much with her being pregnant. Not that they’d be able to tell who cast, because it’s been shielded.” Ben’s expression grows distant.
“What?” I ask, poking his chest. “What is it? What did you just think about?”
“Willem.”
“Who?”
Ben blinks, then focuses on me. “My friend Willem. Well . . . not friend. Acquaintance. Warlock. He apprenticed under Louis Abernathy.” He presses a kiss to my cheek and then gently pulls me off his lap, distracted. He gets to his feet, crossing the room, and pulls out his phone.
I almost want to be hurt that he’s ignoring my very sexy attempts to seduce him, but if we can save Dru, I can seduce him some other time. “Am I supposed to know who Louis Abernathy is?”
“He’s a very old recluse,” Ben tells me, flicking his phone’s screen. He sits on the edge of the bed, and I sling my arms over his shoulders, peeking over him as he moves through his contact list. “Was a monk in the Middle Ages.”
“A monk?”
“Said they had the best books, yeah. Anyway, Abernathy is also the only person alive that’s so good at scrying he can crack any spell and tell you who cast it and when.”
I gasp, squeezing Ben’s neck with excitement. “Call him! Call him right now!”
“I don’t have his phone number. Only Willem knows how to get in touch with him.” He pulls up a name—Willem’s—and begins to text. I rumple his hair and move away, not wanting to bother him while he texts his friend, and lean back in the bed again. My stomach growls, and I reach over to snag Ben’s peanut butter crackers.
As I pick up a package, I see a card on the nightstand. It’s soggy and smeared with mud, the edges warped. But there’s no mistaking that card. I’d know it anywhere.
It’s my Sun-Phoenix. He’s kept it with him? I touch the edge, and the smear of mud on my fingers looks just like the mud from the well. My heart squeezes as I look over at Ben, the man willing to let all the people he knows think terrible things about him for centuries because he didn’t want his parents to suffer. Because he didn’t want them to be tortured and burned at the stake.
I can’t imagine the trauma he went through, and my heart aches for him all over again. I curl up in bed, watching him as he types, worrying about Dru and about myself. If we can find out who cast this spell, maybe we can stop them before they get to me.
I don’t want Ben to lose anyone else he cares for.