His Witch To Keep (Keepers of the Veil) (17 page)

“I barely remember that. We were playing, and then I was in the water.”

“Your mom saw it. Liz just stood there smiling in an eerie way…your mom knew Liz meant it. Liz did it on purpose, and not in a sisterly mischievous way. The girl really wanted you dead. Your mother had to protect you. That’s why she and your dad forced you to do weapons training so hard. When they weren’t there to protect you from Liz anymore, the goddess gave you a more powerful protector. Alexi.”

Her mind swirled with the information. She pushed away from Charlotte. Weird events from her childhood suddenly made sense. The fire when she was eight. The time she got lost on a camping trip when she was ten. “Why didn’t you tell me? Warn me?”

“I wasn’t sure if Liz was over it once she moved out on her own. I’m sorry. So very sorry. That’s why I propose we not keep secrets from each other anymore. There’s enough for us to contend with without us keeping things from each other, particularly potentially life-threatening things.” Charlotte glanced back toward the condo behind the tent. “I’ll tell the boys you’re fine.” She slid a business envelope from the folds of her voluminous gauzy dress. “He gave this to Eli to give to you.”

Serenity took the envelope—the seal had already been broken—and glanced up. “He as in Alexi?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Alexi faced off with Eli? Oh, my. Is Eli okay?”

“He was pissed when Alexi walked away from him. Sounds like the idiot threatened your death reaper, but he’s fine other than damaged pride.” Charlotte smiled wide.

“What?”

“You’re going to make a great mother.”

Serenity shifted, uncomfortable under Charlotte’s
get on with it
stare. “I’m not ready for kids.”

Charlotte squeezed her arm. “Get back to that man and…it’ll happen without you trying very hard. We all seem to have a damned embarrassing weakness when it comes to our boys in the bedroom.” She sighed and gazed across the water. “I’m so darn sorry I didn’t tell you about Liz. I guess I owe you one.” She smiled wanly. “I know you’ll take advantage of that one day. We need you to be the ferocious woman you’ve trained to become. We need you to teach all of us how to protect ourselves with weapons. Beyond the boys, you are our strongest protector, as evidenced by the Confirmation. Right now to be strong, you need him. So, go back to your parents’ place in the other dimension. Look at that envelope, and then find him. I’m sorry I opened it, but I didn’t want it to be full of some bullshit Liz might’ve done to torture you from her afterlife.”

Serenity rotated the envelope that had her name scrawled across the front. She said, “Thank you.”

“There’s a way to know if it’s meant to be with him. You know this, don’t you?” Charlotte asked.

Serenity shook her head.

“Do the chest mark. The gods will only allow the mark to work on the man they deem is your destined person.”

“I thought that’s reserved for ceremonial marriage only.”

“It can be done without ceremony.”

“I’ll remember that.” She glanced toward the condo and the guys still milling on the deck. “I need to talk to Eli.”

No one spoke as she ascended the wooden stairs to the landing in front of the condo. She met Bryce’s concerned stare. She hadn’t really looked at him a long time. He’d aged so much even in the past year. They all knew his time was limited. “Thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much it meant for you to be there for us when our life imploded after my parents died, and after my time with the OLM. I was a mess for a while.” She hugged him. “I’m sorry I was pretty awful to you, especially on security issues.”

Bryce held her tight. “You gave me more than a few gray hairs. You don’t have to go it alone all the time.”

She stepped back. “If you boys will stop suffocating me, then I’d be happy to collaborate.”

Matt nodded. His gaze darted to where Kat laughed beneath the tent. “What was that power surge about?”

Serenity smiled mysteriously. “Sisterhood.”

“What does that mean?” Matt asked cautiously.

“We’re going to be getting together more often.”

Matt’s eyes snapped to Bryce. “You said it was too dangerous.”

Bryce shrugged with a clear
it’s your problem
half smile.

“We need each other,” she said. “Kat suggested cauldrons. Then Jen had some potions ideas…”

Matt groaned.

Bryce chuckled.

Her gaze slid to Eli, who stared at her like a lost puppy. A Great Dane puppy, but still not the powerful man she knew he could be. “Will you walk with me a few minutes?”

Eli nodded.

She led him down the stairs and around to the front of the house, where there was a wooded area. Less public.

Crap. Where to start. They walked in silence for many awkward minutes.

Finally he said, “I know. Hell, I know. I just…somewhere along the way things changed for me. I think I love you.”

Serenity halted and gazed up at him. “We aren’t destined. I really wanted it to be you, especially during the university days. But…don’t you remember that one time we kissed in my flat?”

“I thought it was pretty good.”

“Oh, come on.”

He shrugged, and his look said he clearly thought it’d been great.

She said, “It was dreadful and you bloody well know it. Oh my God. You don’t remember it.” She gripped the back of his head and pulled his mouth to hers. As their lips collided, the same catastrophic ickiness pervaded her being, but she forced herself to try. She detected his muscles turning rigid and his desire to recoil.

Eli broke it off and stepped away with horrified wide eyes. “That was…”

“Awful.”

Eli laughed.

Serenity smiled, relieved.

He said, “You should’ve done that a year ago.”

“I never forgot the first time and wasn’t about to go in for a repeat. It was like kissing my brother or something.” She shuddered. “Besides, a year ago I was having issues with a certain assassin.”

“He doesn’t deserve you.”

Serenity waved at a bench and sat. Eli sat next to her. She said, “You mean I don’t deserve him. Look what he did for me. For both of us.”

Eli’s cheeks darkened with color. “I might’ve done something bad. Or at least given him the impression that you and me…that we were a thing.”

“Charlotte told me. It doesn’t matter. If Alexi wants me in his life bad enough, then that wouldn’t stop him.”

“What does that mean? He’d take me out?”

“I don’t know. He can be unpredictable.”

“Great. Guess I deserve it if he comes after me. Are you going to look for him?”

“I don’t know. It’s not working out very well for me to avoid everything. I think I’ve got to confront him and figure out where we stand. I’m not sure we can make it work, given what he is and what he must do. Do you know what he is? Did Bryce or Charlotte fill you in?”

Eli nodded. “I got the abbreviated version.”

She took his hand and clasped it between both of hers. “Thank you for always being there for me. For not preventing me from doing things in MI6…for asking me not to take risks. You don’t have to quit MI6 this time.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good.” She gazed toward the path that led back to the beach. “I should go say good-bye to the girls. But I’m not really up for it.”

Eli chuckled. “Don’t worry about them. I think I heard their plan was to get drunk, except Kat. Then do a movie or TV thing. I think they wanted to do a
True Blood
marathon. Kat is hopelessly addicted to that show. Matt hates it when she crushes on Joe Manganiello.”

“Vamps and wolves kind of gross me out.” She turned the envelope in her hands, curiosity driving her to look. “I do have one favor to ask before I go.”

“Ask.”

“Can you, um, fix my knees and hands? I tripped while jogging today. Those strawberries are hell for cocktail dresses.”

He chuckled and took her hand. Warmth tingled her knees and her hands where they were skinned. Seconds later he pulled away.

She rotated her hands. “Thanks. I think you’re as good as Matt with this.”

“Let me know if you need me again. For that or for kicking that rat bastard’s ass if he treats you poorly.”

“Thanks.” She shifted back to her alternate dimension and wobbled with hands as feelers over to the sofa to collapse while the shift blindness passed. Her mind whirled with vertigo. Too much hopping and emotional overload.

Once her vision returned, she palmed the thick envelope. With dread she opened it. Inside was a deed to a house, and pictures. She could barely breathe as she perused the pictures. It was this house, but in the other dimension. A stapled-together packet detailed the security upgrades.

There was no note. But she knew. He did this. She didn’t know how he’d convinced them to sell, but he did this.

Chapter Twenty-One

T
he jeans worked, Serenity decided, as she rotated in front of her full-length mirror, but after forty-five minutes and a pile of already-tried shirts, she was nowhere close to finding the right top. She needed sexy but strong. Enticing but…oh, hell, she just wanted Alexi to be turned on. She grabbed a black scoop-neck sweater and tossed the rest of the shirts on a chair. He better care that she’d tried this hard.

She brushed her teeth, messed with her hair for a minute, and renewed her makeup. She glanced at the old perfume bottle on the shelf above the toilet that her mom had called her secret weapon. She sniffed, detecting nothing. Maybe it was a potion from Jen’s mom or something. Perhaps one little dab. Couldn’t hurt. She needed all the magic she could get. She focused to shift back to his dimension. To him.

Upon arrival she went invisible and started the countdown. Her arrival destination lacked city noise, but she did detect ocean waves in the far distance.

“It’s just us,” Alexi rumbled.

She jumped.

“You need not be invisible, but good defensive strategy.”

Her stomach clenched as she dropped invisibility. Had he always sounded that sexy? “Where are you?”

“Right here,” he rumbled nearby.

Reaching around blindly, she collided with him. A sideways step bumped her into him. She looped her arms around his neck, buried her head in his chest, and inhaled his clean masculine scent. His arms wrapped her. Tranquility settled into her mind for the first time since they’d been shot and he disappeared from her life. This was where she belonged. This was the only place she wanted to be.

She whispered, “I couldn’t stand not knowing…after you’d been shot. I worried.”

“It will take more than a bullet to take me down.” She heard the humor in his tone.

“I don’t know. Seemed pretty bad.” She hugged him harder and blinked rapidly against the relief tears cresting on her lids. What was wrong with her today? Every little thing had her eyes leaking.

Long beyond the point her vision returned, he asked, “Are you okay,
ragana
?”

“Yeah…no. I’m not doing so well.”
Please don’t let me go.

“Is it because of your sister? I am sorry she is dead. There was no choice. When Hades orders me to…I cannot argue with him.”

“Actually, it’s not that. I understand why you had to do what you did, but I’m pissed at you for keeping me in the dark about everything that day. What was all that poetic bullshit about trust?”

“If I had told you what might happen, then you would never have gone through with entering that building.”

After a few seconds of silence she admitted, “You’re probably right.”

“I know I’m right.”

“Frigging future-seeing thing. Not fair.” She shook her head against him.

He asked, “Then what’s the problem? Why are you not doing well?”

“Aside from becoming a monstrously humiliating klutz, I have a new problem.”

His body tensed. “A klutz?”

“I fell while jogging today and tore up my knees.”

He moved as if to release her.

She gripped him tighter. “I’m good. Went to my healer. I’m all patched up.”

“So, what kind of problem? Is someone new trying to kill you?”

She smiled against his chest at his dark tone. This man would always be her protector. No matter what transpired between them, he’d be the first to annihilate anyone who posed a threat. “No. I did something stupid.”

He pried her head away from his chest to look at her face.
He’s so bloody handsome
—his broad shoulders, high cheekbones, and thick biceps. He’d gotten a haircut since she’d last seen him. She missed the longer strands.

His forehead wrinkled with worry. “What did you do?”

“There’s this guy…”

His body jerked, but he made no move to let go of her. Emotion darkened his gaze. “A problem guy? Is it that druid? Eli?”

“I never had anything with Eli. The man kisses like a fish. Icky.” She made a disgust face.

“You kissed him?” His eyes narrowed.

She bit her lip to hold back a smile. “Back in undergrad we needed to know. It sucked.”

“There’s another guy? A new guy?”

She almost lost her fight against a smile but pushed onward. “I fell in love with this guy, but he doesn’t want me. I know, stupid. But I couldn’t help it. It just happened. He says his boss won’t let him be with me.” She touched his cheek and traced the definition of his cheekbone.

“Oh” whooshed out of him like a deflating balloon. “You’re in love with him?”

“I…I’m in love with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel.”

He dropped his mouth to hers.

Despite the sweet relief overwhelming her with each pass of his lips, she pulled away from his kiss. “I need to know one thing. Do you want me, Alexi?”

“I’ve always wanted you.” He looked wretched.

“You want me for sex.”

“For so much more than sex, and you know it.” She read only truth to his statement.

“No, I don’t know. Do you love me?” She pleaded with her gaze for him to tell her.

“That’s two things.” His lips twitched upward.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“You only wanted to know one thing.”

“Don’t be an ass. Do you love me?” She resisted the impulse to hit him.

“Yes. But I—”

“I know…Hades.”
He loves me.
Elation spread through her body. She grinned.

“When I future glimpse, I don’t see this…us.”

“You once said the future is never set, that it’s about choices. If you want this…if you want us to be together, then I have a way for us to know if the gods approve.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “But before I try it, you must understand there’s no going back once this is done, if the gods approve.”

He squinted, skeptical. “What are you going to do? I’m not drinking any witch potions.”

“No potion. I can inspire a mark, probably like the one Hades gave you. If the two of us are meant to remain together, then it will appear. It’s a god-approved mark. If we’re not meant to be together, then it won’t work.”

“All right. Do your thing, then.”

She rubbed over his heart. “Can you promise this belongs to me?”

Hoarsely he said, “
Ragana
, you’ve owned that since the second you appeared in my life.”

She smiled and rubbed circles over his heart.

“Ouch.” He stepped back from her and tugged at his shirt to look down his collar. “There’s a new raised mark.”

She whispered, “It worked?” In awe, she stared into his startled green gaze. “That means…they gave us the thumbs-up.”

He looked down his shirt again.

“Let me see.” She pulled down the collar until she could see the red mark over his heart. “A
meandros
. It’s the Greek symbol for eternity. It means we’re…” She trailed off.

“Now you blush? You just put some sort of god mark on me.” He traced a finger across her cheek. “Tell me what else it means, other than the gods gave us approval to share a bed.”

“We’re kind of married, at least according to the Pleiades goddesses.”

M
arried?
A complex joy flared in Alexi’s chest. Part of him felt like he’d won the lottery against crippling odds. But the core of him feared his responsibility to Hades would drive her away from him.

She frowned. “Buyer’s remorse?”

“Are you sure you want this? I will never be released from what I must do for Hades until I die. I must…kill.”

Serenity grew so quiet that he worried. She finally said, “I know and understand that. I love you for who you are. I have things I must do, too, because of what I am.” She glanced out the window and gasped. “I didn’t know we were here. At the house.” She looked around at the newly refurbished kitchen of the Scottish house. “How did you get them to sell? And how could you afford this place?”

A smile spread on Alexi’s lips. “I actually make a lot of money in my line of work but never really had a use for it until now. I can be quite persuasive when I want something.”

“I bet.” She glanced out the panoramic view windows. “So was this supposed to be an
I’m sorry, get on with your life
gift or an
I’m sorry, take me back
?” She slowly met his gaze.

“You are my life.” He closed his eyes and took a breath. “You are the reason I persisted with my duty to Hades and didn’t succumb to injury…to death. Before you appeared I’d lost my way. I’ve spent eleven years protecting you in the shadows and doing jobs when Hades ordered.”

“You don’t have to protect me in the shadows anymore, not that I need protecting.”

He buried his face in her hair and held her there. He shuddered and then sighed as if he’d finally come home. She knew exactly how he felt.

“I quit MI6,” she said.

“So I heard.”

“I had a vision. I don’t usually believe them to be anything more than passing wishes. But I believed in this one, which meant I needed to quit.”

“What did you see?”

“Your son. Our son.” She wove her fingers along his collarbone. “He had your eyes. Your face.”

He ghosted white. “You’re not…are you?”

“Not yet, at least not that I know of. But it’s nice to know there’s at least one thing that can freak you out.” She smiled. “Well, that and when your plan A doesn’t work.”

He gently touched her chin. “You really want this with me? Even after knowing what I must do for the rest of my life?”

“There’s never been anyone else. I love you.” She kissed him.

He smiled. “I’ve got this thing in Japan that I have to do tomorrow…”

She leaned in and nibbled on his ear. “Can I be the redhead?”

Hoarsely he said, “
Ragana
, you can be whatever you want so long as you follow my plan.”

“We’ll see about that.”

His gaze narrowed. “We will not do unpredictable.”

She grinned. “That’s the best part.”

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