"You traded your magic?"
Elyssia shrugs and Portia wipes her brow with the back of her hand before turning away. "I suggest you go to your room. Dennis will be outside, should you decide to abscond again. You may've used your magic to slip the last bodyguards you had, but not again. I'll be warding the house."
"Abscond," says Elyssia with a snort. "So polite. So regal. If you make me leave my life here for another court, and I have to marry some dude I don't like, I'll make sure my kingdom is stronger than yours! You'll be sorry you’re doing this!"
Whoa. I glance at Ewan and tense, ready for Portia's outburst, a crackle of magic, something.
"Good night, Elyssia," she replies firmly, without looking at her daughter.
I cross my arms, awkward in the silence, a feeling matched by Ewan judging by his gaze at the floor. Man, their world is complicated.
Once Elyssia leaves the room, with her shoulders straight, emulating her mother's haughtiness, Portia pulls out two wine glasses from beneath the bench.
"Join me for a drink."
"No, we need to be getting back to the house," says Ewan.
"And I'm driving," I put in.
Portia ignores us and pours. "How are my favourite boys?"
I blink at her behaving as if we're friends who haven't visited for some time, not estranged allies. "Missing your help right now."
"Mmm?" Portia pushes the glasses towards us and picks up hers. "Is your Fifth still with you?"
"Yes. And she's not going anywhere," Ewan says in a warning tone.
"So I gather. And how about the delightful War. Is he ready to apologise yet?"
Xander apologise? She knows the likelihood of that, judging by her smirking face.
"If the apology is mutual, I imagine he would," I reply. "Things became a little heated."
Portia carefully cuts cheese and places it onto to crackers she has lain out on a plate in front of her, and we wait as she slowly eats. Eventually she licks her fingers and returns her attention our way. "I'm prepared to listen to Xander, if he can agree to my terms."
One thing about Portia, it's impossible to judge what she's thinking. She's clever—putting herself across as a charming and friendly lady—but we've seen her darker moods many times.
"What terms?" asks Ewan. "We'll speak to him."
"An apology. The truth about everything you four have done in recent months. Xander must also allow us to question Verity."
I scratch my eyebrow. She certainly likes to pile on her demands.
"And Xander must come to my bed." Another sip, another smile.
"What?" Mine and Ewan's voices reply in shocked unison.
"Xander. Sex. A proof of our unity."
Oh, holy fuck. He would never do something like that. But my shock is joined by a guilty relief that she didn't ask either of us. But of course not, because she perceives Xander as our strongest and the one she needs to conquer.
There's no way anybody could conquer War.
Her laughter chimes around the kitchen. "Your faces! You Pony Boys are so precious! I adore you. I'm joking."
There's a part of me that thinks she isn't. Over the last ten years, Portia's repeatedly propositioned us and then denied she was interested. Is that face saving?
Ewan rubs a hand across his face. "I'm too tired for this, Portia. Can you accept us bringing home Elyssia as a pledge of our loyalty? If we wanted to betray the fae on any level, we wouldn't have helped. We didn't want to interfere because there’s enough shit we're dealing with right now, but we did."
"And for that I am very grateful, and yes this does shine a new light on our situation and relationship." She places her fingers on his arm. "I would like to repay your help in some way. Perhaps we could organise to meet, and you can tell me everything." She emphasis the word everything.
He looks over at me, and I nod. "As long as you reciprocate with information, Portia, because I think you’re holding something back too.”
“Of course.”
“And I don't want you to bring Logan to the meeting."
Portia drops into one of her silences, the kind where things could go either way. Then she smiles. "I will be in touch tomorrow. I need to attend to my daughter."
She leaves us in the kitchen, where I stare at the school notices attached to the fridge by magnets, at the planner posted on the wall besides Kailey's behaviour chart. The kitchen's filled with the ordinary in the middle of a household that's anything but.
We leave, hearing raised voices above as we pass the stairs, hopeful we may be able to get back on track with Portia and gain some help.
11
JOSS
I stand in the study and cross my arms as I run a gaze along the bookshelves in the quiet room looking for a specific book. The afternoon Vee made it clear our relationship would be between the five of us, and not two, I joked about showing her the pictures in one book, but now I'm concerned this isn't a joke anymore.
The book—containing Truth—is one filled with references to demonic magic, and that scares me. This worried us early on, until we met Vee and discovered how much of us she contained, and how I couldn’t sense anything demonic around her. But does her recent behaviour point to a demon connection? Judging by how tricky everything is right now, I'm keeping these worries to myself to avoid an overreaction, especially by Ewan.
Vee's calmer than she was, back to her old self.
I'm not.
I have no fucking idea what I saw when I died, but I'm followed by an unease as great as when the wraith, or whatever the hell it was, followed me. As with the creatures that attacked Ewan, I've spent spare time pouring over books while Ewan looks online.
There's nothing in any mythology that harms in the way the creature killed me. A Horseman. One of the strongest beings on the planet.
But am I? Are we?
What and why did I remember?
The worst part is that the scene loops through my mind. If I drift away, tired by everything, the image of the girls, the gun... death sneak in. Worse still, I find myself in the place I was amongst the screaming. Just thinking about it sets my heart racing at a level that constricts my chest to the point I can't breathe.
I asked Ewan what happened when he died, and he saw nothing. Maybe because he was only dead for minutes?
I'm damn sure Xander or Heath will be targeted next, and if it's Heath... what then? Vee doesn't have the power.
Yet.
"Joss?" Vee's voice pushes through the shadows in my mind and shoves away the memories about to return.
The soft expression and concern in her eyes isn't an emotionless Vee, perhaps Ewan got through to her? The wild-eyed need isn't in her eyes as it was last time we spent time in the study.
Did she really want me that evening? Or was she driven by this primal something inside her? Now Vee's calmer about the situation and she hasn't hinted she wants help with eradicating her humanity, I'm relaxing around her. Perhaps I'll discover her true motives.