Chains of Ice (36 page)

“It was not!” Gary swiveled toward her.

Brandon scampered away.

John straightened in his chair.

Gary dropped his head and stared at Genny, his eyelids fluttering.

She heard that hum streaking toward her.

Heat, pain, and energy flew like a knife through her brain. Every muscle in her body went into a spasm; her back arched as she fought to hold her own against the hell of pain and torment.

Brandon caught her, held her upright, shouting unintelligibly.

John stood. With his wrists still tied to the wooden chair, he strained to lift his arms.

Gold and red flashed like an inferno of power.

Wood splintered.

With first one of the shattered uprights, then the other, he slammed Gary in the back of the head.

Released from her hell, Genny shoved Brandon aside. “Run!” she told him.

But Brandon covered his head with his hands and crouched on the floor.

John’s power rolled through the room in waves.

Gary pitched forward, almost fell, then bounced back as if on a spring—and he was off his feet, rising from the floor.

He screamed, “Let me down. Let me down!”

John held his arms up, then twirled them, the wooden staves clacking together.

Still in the air, still screaming, riding on a wave of power, Gary tumbled through the entrance and out into the narrow entry. He slammed into the wall above the narrow basement stairs.

John followed, his brow furrowed with concentration. He held Gary out over the steps.

“No. No!” Gary understood now what John intended. “John, no!”

“Will you look like a rag doll falling down those stairs?” John asked, so cool, so calm in his anger. “Will your bones crunch on each step?”

“John, remember our years together,” Gary shouted. “We were friends.”

Genny snorted. Now he dredged that up.

Someone tugged at Genny’s arm. She used her elbow in a combative dig. “Leave me alone, Brandon.”

The point of a knife dug into her throat. She stiffened, held her breath.

Avni whispered in her ear, “I’m
not
Brandon, and I
will
kill you if you don’t tell me where your father keeps his treasures.”

She stomped Avni’s bony foot, grabbed her skinny wrist and dragged it over her shoulder, twisting until Avni’s grip loosened and the slim, curved knife fell to the ground.

Avni screeched, wrapped her freakishly long arm around Genny’s throat, and squeezed.

Genny gagged, choked. She lifted both feet off the floor, using the weight of her body to throw Avni off-balance.

Avni staggered forward.

The two women slammed into the wall.

Avni’s elbow hit so hard, she dented the wallpaper.

But Genny’s forehead hit just as hard. She blacked out, then struggled back to consciousness.

John shouted something—he’d seen them.

Distantly, she heard Gary scream, heard a body tumbling down the stairs.

Twirling Genny around, Avni held her like a shield. “I’ll kill her. I swear, John, I’ll kill her!” she shouted, and tightened her elbow. Then, “Brandon, give me the knife.”

Genny clawed at Avni’s arm . . . seeing the scene—John’s focused attention, Brandon’s blubbering dismay—through the haze of her pain and distress.

“Brandon, give me the knife!” Avni commanded.

He leaned down, picked up the blade.

He lunged toward them.

Genny was going to die.

And suddenly, she was free.

She fell to her knees, gasping, holding her throat.

John seized her by the waist, swung her aside as Avni crashed to the floor, eyes shocked, blood rhythmically spurting from the side of her neck. She struggled for a moment, then went limp.

Brandon stood, splattered with red, knife in hand, gaping at Avni’s body as if he couldn’t comprehend how Avni had died, that he had stabbed her. “She told me to give it to her. She said to give her the knife. She was hurting Genny, so I did. I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it.” He was babbling, using his bloody hands for emphasis. “Because I love Genny.”

Genny tried to speak. She could only wheeze.

Moving with watchful care, John set her on the floor.

She sank to her knees, clutching her aching head.

John stripped away the ropes around his wrists and dropped the shattered pieces of chair. Calm, strong, gentle, he took a step forward. “Brandon, drop the knife.”

Brandon looked at John as if he’d never seen him before. “But I love Avni.”

“I know you do. Drop the knife, Brandon.”

“Avni gives me what I need.” He extended the knife. “Without Avni, I can’t live.” And he stabbed himself in the abdomen. He carved himself open, the upward thrust aimed at his heart.

Genny groaned and covered her eyes.

But he gasped her name. “Genny!”

She looked up.

He grinned, and for the first time looked like the old, obnoxious Brandon. “Take care of . . . the yeti.”

Then the flame inside him went out.

He dropped like a stone.

Turning back to Genny, John knelt beside her. “I tried, but I never quite got the hang of subtle power movements,” he told her. Gently, he pulled her into his arms.

She leaned against him. She touched the three bloody marks on his shirt, caught her breath, collected her thoughts, trembled with reaction. Then she sank into him, became one with him. Because like it or not, this was where she was meant to be.

Under her ear, she heard him take a deep breath. He embraced her as if he would never let her go, then stood with her in his arms and carried her out of that horrible room and into the entry.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I was afraid to trust you, and it cost me everything. I’ve been in hell every day for more than two and a half years. Even though I thought—no,
knew
—you were dead, I never stopped searching for you.”

“And no matter how far I traveled, I couldn’t forget you.” She pushed gently against him until he let her slide to her feet. “Believe me. I tried.”

He looked achingly amused. “Good to know.” His expression changed; he pulled his vibrating phone from the inner pocket of his jacket, glanced at the text. “It’s from Isabelle. Irving is still alive.” He glanced out the front window at the night. “And the sun has set. That’s good. That’s very good. Excuse me while I answer?”

“Of course.” She scrutinized him while he texted. A drop of blood had dried beside his eye . . . Had Gary’s attack done that? A long, deep scratch marred his arm; a piece of splintered chair had slashed him.

The shoulder of his shirt was stained with blood. He was thinner than she remembered, and where before his face had been rugged, it was now sculpted, the skin stretched thin across his high cheekbones.

But he looked good with his dark hair grown out to businessman’s length. And his light blue eyes, when he finished and looked up at her, became a deep, glorious cornflower blue.

They couldn’t talk now; she knew that. They had a mission. But she saw his determination—and the savage lurking inside. They
would
talk.

Genny gestured toward the living room and down the stairs. “My God, John. How did this happen?”

“The bad guys wanted something very important. You refused to give it to them.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“I’ll bet you have an idea.”

“Well . . . yes.”

His expression made the subtle shift back to responsibility. “Where do we look?”

“The first place is the junk drawer in the kitchen.” She led the way toward the back of the house. “Anything in my father’s possession that the Gypsy Travel Agency deemed of real importance, they removed as soon as his arrest had been made. Other pieces were left in place to be photographed as evidence of his wrongdoing.”

The kitchen hadn’t changed except to grow a little shabbier. Knives had scratched the wood-grain Formica countertop. Linoleum squares, put down by her grandfather, had curled at the edges. A wooden desk and chair filled the small breakfast nook, and on the stovetop, warped aluminum drip pans held bubbles of burned-on grease.

“What was left to him was considered junk. He had it all appraised, of course, sold anything worth anything . . .” She yanked open the junk drawer beside the copper-colored refrigerator and rummaged through dried-out pens, old batteries, pads of paper pilfered from Lizzie’s Plumbing. “Unless he threw it away, the purse is in the kitchen somewhere. I remember seeing it around.”

“Irving said”—John swallowed—“artifacts of power are never gone forever.”

“Probably true,” she said gently.

John was worried about Irving. She was sorry for his grief, but at the same time, so glad to see the proof of his caring.

“For sure, Father never throws anything away if there’s a chance he might ever make a profit from it. That purse is around here somewhere.” She lifted her hair off her forehead and in her mind, she walked the house, looking for that small leather sack with the yellow tie.

But her burns felt like hot coals on her skin, and John watched her closely, as if he was about to take her to a doctor regardless of the importance of their find.

“I’m fine,” she told him.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Regardless, we need to find that—”

A door slammed behind them.

They turned together, hands up, ready for a fight.

“Yes. I hid as soon as they came in.” He twisted at the waist, back and forth, loosening his back. “Do you know how cramped it is in that closet?”

Genny stared at him, at the father she hadn’t seen for so long, at the father who thought she was dead . . . and his reaction was to twitch the seam of his starched khakis back into place and complain about the space where he hid while she was tortured and almost murdered. All the hurt started to rise in her . . . and then it subsided.

Because really, what was the point?

He was what he was, and she could never change that.

More important, she now knew a few things about herself. That she could survive and thrive alone in this world.

And that she didn’t have to, because she had John.

She took John’s hand. “Father, John and I are getting married.”

John released a sigh.

She didn’t know if it was relief or unhappiness. She lifted her brows at him. “Aren’t we?”

“The sooner the better.” John sounded quite sure.

“Did you want to ask me before I announced it?”

“I intend to beg you . . . later.”

“Beg me to marry you?”

“That, too.” He was
not
smiling.

His expression made her remember the waves of power and how he could change them to create desire . . . as if she could ever forget.

Her face grew warm.

“We’ll talk,” he said.

“Hm.” He seemed to be planning more than talk.

It had been so long . . .

Turning her attention back to her father, she asked, “Will you want to come to the wedding?”

“Of course! How would it look if I didn’t?” Her father focused on John. “I remember you. You’re the one who came and confirmed her death.”

“A rash assumption on my part.” John kissed her hand. “Now, instead, I’d like to ask for her hand in marriage.”

Oh, John!
She squeezed his fingers and glared at him.

He looked surprised.

“I don’t know that I should give my permission.” Her father hitched up his belt. “John, will you be able to support my daughter in a decent fashion?”

“Dad! What do you think?” Genny could hardly contain her exasperation. “He’s one of the Chosen. I mean, what do they pay them, minimum wage? And now that the Gypsy Travel Agency has exploded, the Chosen are probably fighting evil out of the goodness of their hearts. Give it a break.” She got to the heart of her father’s concern. “We can’t support you.”

“Ah.” Father stroked his chin as if he were still considering John’s request.

So she charged on. “Since I really doubt CFG is holding my position,
and
the job market sucks,
and
I have no experience,
and
you can’t support me, either, I’d suggest you give your permission.”

“All right, fine,” he said irritably. “Permission granted.”

“Thank you, sir.” John had a twinkle in his eye she didn’t understand.

They really needed the time to have that talk.

“In the meantime,” Father said irritably, “what am I supposed to do with the mess you left in my house?”

“We have contacts in the police department,” John said briefly. “The matter will be handled.”

Father inclined his head as if he expected nothing else.

His handsome face was still unlined, his dark hair handsomely streaked with silver, and she wondered if he had a painting stored somewhere in the attic, one that, like Dorian Gray’s, revealed the corruption of his soul.

“We came here to get that leather sack of bones that has been rattling around here for years.”

His eyes narrowed.

She could see him contemplating a deal. So she said, “Father, give me the artifact . . . or else.”

“Or else what?” He mocked her; he had no idea who she had become.

“Or else I’ll let the Others know you were here and heard everything that occurred.”

That got his attention. “I didn’t hear anything!”

“I know how to lie, Father. I was taught by an expert.” Right now, she was as cold and indifferent as he had ever been. “You lied to me when I signed that contract that paid for my college.”

“I did not.” He looked absolutely assured . . . but a drop of sweat trickled down the side of his face. “You assumed it was the Gypsy Travel Agency who was loaning you the money.”

She looked at him. Just looked.

“Oh, all
right
.” He walked to the desk in the breakfast nook, pulled out a drawer and rummaged around. “What’s the big deal, anyway? That purse was banging around the Gypsy Travel Agency for a hundred years before I . . . before it was fobbed off on me.” He pulled out a leather sack tied in yellow ribbon.

With a sigh of relief, Genny took it from him.

John disappeared, then reappeared with Genny’s coat.

Father added, “I had that purse appraised and it, and its contents, is worth nothing.”

She weighed it in her hand. “Are all the bones inside?”

“The same bones that were always there,” Father said.

“All right. Thank you.” She awkwardly kissed him on the cheek. “See you around.”

“She’s in bad shape, but don’t bother to worry about her.” John helped her into her coat, and his voice weighed heavy with sarcasm. “I’ll take her to the hospital for her burns.” Once more, he pulled out his phone and glanced at it. “You don’t need to call us a cab. One is pulling up to the door right now.”