Jocelynn Drake - [Asylum Tales 02] (9 page)

I closed the curtain again and grabbed the soap. “Give me a minute. I’m almost finished.”

“It’s okay. I just stopped by to tell you something.”

There was a long pause and I froze in the process of spreading soap over my chest. Her voice didn’t sound like it was going to be a happy something.

“You’re here to tell me that you’re pregnant and want to run away with me so we can be broccoli farmers in Montana,” I said, trying to get her to laugh.

“Do they grow broccoli in Montana?”

“I have no idea.”

Another long pause twisted in my tender gut. I dropped the soap and jerked the curtain back again. “Are you pregnant?”

Trixie scowled at me. “No, I’m not pregnant.”

“Oh. Good.” I closed the curtain and quickly finished rinsing off. “Then what’s up?”

“The Summer Court is in Low Town.”

I turned off the water and jerked the curtain completely open. Trixie’s eyes skimmed over the entire length of my naked body before rising back to my face.

“Nice,” she murmured with a grin.

It was my turn to scowl at her. I grabbed a towel hanging opposite the shower and started to dry off. “Have you spoken to your brother?”

“Not yet.”

“Have the king’s men made another grab for you?”

“No.”

I stopped drying off and stared at her in confusion. “Then how do you know?”

Her lovely mouth twisted up into a frown. “I just . . . know. It’s a feeling. I can’t explain it. Summer elves know when the Court is near. This isn’t just a few of my people. Both the king and the queen are in the area.”

I nodded, wrapping the towel around my waist before stepping out of the shower. “Fine. Then we have to be careful.”

“I trust my brother. He’ll be fair about this. He’ll send word as to whether the queen will meet with us before he comes after me again.”

“All the same—”

“All the same,” she interrupted with a knowing smile. “I’m going to stay with Bronx this afternoon until my shift and then I’ll be at the parlor with you until we go on our little adventure tonight.”

“Shit! That’s tonight?” I groaned.

My nightmare had completely wiped my memory of the fact that I was scheduled to conduct a little larceny with Trixie this evening. I wanted to strangle the king of the Summer Court. He had been hounding Trixie for three centuries, trying to force her to be his consort after it was discovered that he and his wife couldn’t have children. If he made another grab for her, I was afraid that Trixie would bolt and I didn’t want to think about living without her.

“I’m going, Gage,” she warned. “I’ll agree to extra precautions, but I won’t stop living because of the bastard. So you can get that look off your face.”

“What look?” I tried for innocent, but knew she wouldn’t believe it.

“The one that says you plan to lock me in a room and guard it with a thousand trolls.”

I grinned at her. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Trixie leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “I’ll see you tonight and I’m still going.” The elf quickly slipped out of the room before I could grab her, leaving me with only the haunting scent of her floral perfume.

With a sigh, I finished getting ready and met Robert in the kitchen, where he was pouring himself a cup of coffee. He stepped out of the way as I grabbed a mug and filled it.

“Everything good?” he asked from the doorway as I took my first sip.

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh as my grumbling stomach accepted my peace offering of heat and caffeine. I’d appease it with actual food when I made my way to the parlor.

“How long have you two . . . ?”

Robert’s voice drifted off and I smiled. I had never let myself imagine this day. I never thought I’d see him standing in the kitchen with me while we drank coffee. I never thought we’d talk again.

“I’ve known Trixie for a couple years, but we’ve been dating only a couple months.”

He grunted and took another drink of his coffee. Last night he’d told me that he was divorced and had no kids. We had learned odd facts and collected strange stories about each other’s life, but there were big gaping holes in his past that I was waiting to have filled in.

“I want you to stay in my apartment,” I said before draining the last of my coffee.

“Why?”

I walked over to the faucet and rinsed out my mug before putting it in the sink. “It’s safer. I don’t know who else knows about the information Reave’s trying to move or if anyone knows you’re involved. We need time to think and plan. No one knows we’re related, so they won’t think to look here.”

Robert frowned at me, looking as if he was ready to argue.

“Just for a few days. It won’t be bad. I’ve got cable, Internet, video games, and food in the fridge. You can spend the day eating, gaming, and watching Internet porn for all I care. Just stay here.”

“Can I at least go back to my place and get some clothes?”

“Fine. Be quick and don’t make any calls. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” he grumbled, leaning against the counter across from me.

I pulled open a drawer and grabbed a spare key to my apartment. Tossing it to him, I walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. “I’ll be at Asylum until dark and then Trixie and I have to run an errand. I should be back here near midnight,” I said as I picked up my keys, wallet, and cell phone from the coffee table and shoved them into my pockets.

“Anything else, Mom?” he asked with a sneer.

“Yeah, don’t do anything stupid.”

Robert flipped me off, but he was smiling when he did it. I flashed him dual birds in return and then headed for the door. I needed to get to Asylum. I did my best thinking in the parlor.

“Hey, Gage.”

Robert’s voice stopped me as I pulled open the door. I turned to look back at him and frowned. He looked genuinely uncomfortable and for a moment I thought he was going to tell me to go on.

When he spoke, his voice was gruff and halting, as if he was afraid to speak. “That nightmare you had. Was it about when you were in the Towers?”

I quickly glanced out into the hall and was relieved to find it empty. My nosy neighbors didn’t need to know I was an ex-warlock.

“Yeah,” I said on a sigh.

“Was . . . was it bad there?”

My eyes fell closed for a second. Robert and I had never discussed my time in the Towers. I never discussed it with anyone. They were dark, ugly memories, for the most part filled with pain and screams and someone somewhere dying.

“Yeah, it was bad.”

“I’m sorry. When you were taken, I made all kinds of plans on how to rescue you. But I guess after about three years, I finally figured out that I couldn’t rescue you. No one could.”

I smiled weakly at my brother. He was leaning against the wall, his hands fisted at his sides as he stared at the floor, lost in the pain of an old memory. “The Towers are a bad place, but I don’t entirely regret it. If I hadn’t learned to control my powers, I could have hurt you or Meg without meaning to. I could never have lived with that.”

Robert nodded, but remained silent. I waited, not sure if he had anything else to say. I felt like we were both treading on eggshells. A sigh escaped me as I started to leave again.

“When I came in, you . . . you kept saying ‘Bryce.’ He a friend?” Robert asked, stopping me.

“No,” I said, looking away from my brother to stare out into the hall. “He was a kid I knew a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

His words cut like razor blades across my flesh rather than the balm he meant them to be. I grunted and then pulled the door shut behind me. By his tone, Robert knew Bryce was dead. But he’d never know that his baby brother had killed the boy.

If there was any justice in this world, Bryce was at peace, away from all the pain, fear, and misery. And if he was, a little part of me envied him and hoped he forgave me.

8

WITH EVERYTHING GOING
on with Reave, my brother, and the Towers, it wasn’t the best time to try to break into a walled-off private garden, but the growth cycle of the rare Asian Moon Lily couldn’t be altered simply because I was having a bad day. I was irritated by the distraction from what I needed to be doing, but in truth, I had to get away from the shop and all the building insanity so I could clear my head. And what better way to clear my head than to do a little trespassing and larceny?

Trixie was settled beside me in the tree, seeming more ghostly apparition in the moonlight than flesh and blood. It was the first time she had accompanied me on this excursion and I was grateful that she had chosen sneakers instead of her usual heels and leather.

“I can’t believe you do this,” Trixie said as she sank into a new crouched position in the large maple tree we were sitting in. We had been up in the tree for nearly a half hour as we waited for the last of the lights in the house to go out. Our legs were starting to cramp and grow stiff, but I wasn’t willing to move yet. “You know they sell this stuff at most potion-supply stores.”

Looking up at her, I smiled. “You know how expensive that stuff is? Crazy. This is easier.”

“And dangerous.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, but it’s certainly more fun.”

About three years ago, I had entered a pool with five other parlor owners in the area. We had found the only grower of the Asian Moon Lily in the region and decided that we would liberate one flower when it opened. The catch was that the Asian Moon Lily only opened at night once every twenty-eight days. As a result, it was my turn to pluck a flower once every six months, which was an agreeable schedule.

“I don’t think we even need the flower,” Trixie continued with a frown. “None of us have used it in the shop lately and the flower remains good for one year when stored properly.”

“We don’t, but that’s not the point.” It was rare that any group member needed the flower. We all had enough stock after the first three months of the agreement, but no one had wanted to stop. It was too much fun.

A few days before the run, e-mails were sent around so the runner knew who needed a piece of the flower. Any pieces left over were usually sold. For my run, I had only two shops needing a supply. Since we had learned to divide it evenly six ways, that meant I had four portions to sell for myself.

The other catch was that the previous runner never told the next person if the garden owner had made any changes to his security. Since we came regularly every twenty-eight days, the owner knew when we would show up and regularly implemented new security measures to stop us. Nothing lethal, but enough to get you caught if you weren’t paying attention. And who wanted to go to jail for stealing a fucking flower?

I glanced over my shoulder at the elf as she stared over the eight-foot wall toward the garden. “Look, if you’re going to suck all the fun out of this, you can stay here.”

“I’m trying to be sensible. I’m not sucking the fun out.”

“Oh, I definitely feel some suckage going on.” Trixie glared at me, but I could see the hint of a smile she was fighting to hold back. “I thought you’d want to spend some quality time together.”

“Not exactly my idea of quality time.”

I looked back toward the garden, shifting on the large branch as I tried to get some circulation back into my legs. “You know, there’s more to life than sex.”

Trixie smacked me on the back of the head. “No, there’s not.”

I opened my mouth to tease her some more, but the light we had been waiting for went out on the second floor of the house. The owner was settling into bed and it was only eleven. Early for him considering what night it was. He had something new he was planning. In all my visits, the man had tried motion-sensor lights, glass shards in the top of the wall, moving the flower inside the house, dogs, and even a couple hired thugs. From what I heard, the dogs had lasted one month, if not less, as I believe the type of dog he acquired also liked to dig. New security items came and went without warning so you were never quite sure what you were faced with.

“I don’t understand why you don’t . . . you know . . .” Trixie broke off and waved her hands in the direction of the garden.

I fought back a smile, playing dumb. “What? Flap my arms like a chicken?”

“You know what I mean!” she said in a harsh whisper.

“You mean the stuff I’m forbidden to do?” I pointedly asked, arching one brow at her.

“Like that’s stopped you.”

With a shrug, I looked at the garden wall again. “I like to think the forbidding part has at least slowed me down. I can’t rely on something that I’m not supposed to be using in the first place.”

“True,” Trixie murmured, and then fell silent for several moments. “How do you want to do this?”

“You don’t have to—”

“Oh, I want to. I was just making sure that you wanted to do this.”

I chuckled. This woman was insane and I loved her for it. Pushing the thought roughly aside, I focused on the garden before us. This might not be a dangerous task, but I still didn’t want to get caught for sneaking in to steal a flower. “Careful and quiet. With the weather remaining relatively warm at night, the six pots should be in the center of the garden next to a fountain. He’s been turning off the fountain at night so we won’t have the sound to muffle our movement. We take one flower. No more. You have your bone knife?”

“Got it.”

Asian Moon Lilies were extremely temperamental. They were notoriously hard to grow and the flowers could be cut using only a knife blade made from bone. Anything else would instantly destroy the magical properties of the bloom. From there, the flower had to be stored in a brown paper bag in a dark space.

Glancing up at the house one last time to make sure there was no movement that I could see, I jumped down from the tree and headed across the yard to the garden gate. I peered through the iron bars at the garden in the full moonlight. All was quiet, with no sign of a dog or thug. In the center of the garden in a circle around a silent fountain were six terra-cotta pots holding large bushy plants with showy white blooms. Only two of the six plants were blooming tonight. The others would bloom within the next few days.

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a lock pick that I had used for nearly three years on the gate—one of the few things the garden owner had never bothered to change. With a soft click, it swung open without a sound. I hesitated. Nothing moved in the garden. There was no breeze to stir the leaves, no nocturnal animals flitting about. It looked empty and safe, but my stomach churned as adrenaline pumped through my veins. I was missing something. There had to be more. Unfortunately, the only way for me to see anything was to step farther into the garden.

With my left hand, I waved once behind me, motioning for Trixie to approach while I stepped into the garden. I moved toward the house, peering into the darkened windows through slits in curtains and in between slats in blinds. My eyesight was no better than any other human’s in darkness, but I saw nothing within the house. Turning back toward the garden, I watched as Trixie soundlessly moved between the plants along the little stone path to the center. The moonlight glided over her, caressing her curves. The small bone knife in her hand seemed to glow as she raised it to one of the flowers.

As she came away with a bloom cradled in her hand, I approached the center of the garden. Trixie tucked the blade away in her pocket and looked at me with a mocking expression. “You made this sound difficult.”

I shrugged. “Some months are. He may not have had time to play tonight.” Lifting one hand to cup her cheek, I leaned in to kiss her, but my body froze less than an inch from hers when I heard an out-of-place click. Trixie stiffened under my fingers as she heard it as well.

Fuck. We had company.

The click that came from one of the garden doors to the house was followed by a much louder
chunk
from a shotgun as a round was chambered. Lifting my hand from Trixie’s face, I held both hands open and out to my sides as I turned around.

A little old man with a bald head and a wrinkled face like a bulldog frowned at me as he held a shotgun pointed at me and Trixie. His skin was a nice chocolate brown, while his dark eyes were lost in the night. “Brought some help this time, didn’t ya?”

“A shotgun, George?” I said with a sigh. “Do we really need a shotgun over a flower?”

The old man glared at me through thick glasses balanced on his round nose. The end of the gun trembled slightly as if he was already getting tired of pointing it at us. “This shit is getting old. Sneaking into my garden, stealing my flowers. I thought a gun would show you that I mean business this time.”

“Fine. Then let my associate leave unharmed and we’ll discuss it.” Trixie bumped my back with either her hand or elbow, I couldn’t quite tell. She wasn’t exactly pleased with my suggestion. Didn’t matter. Bringing Trixie along for a silly romp through a garden at night was one thing. Letting an old man point a gun at her was entirely different, and I wasn’t good with that.

“And let her leave with my flower? Not a chance?”

I clenched my teeth in my growing frustration. My fingertips tingled as the urge to draw in the energy to cast a protective spell was nearly overwhelming. “She’ll leave it here.”

“How did you catch us?” Trixie interrupted.

George graced her with a smug smile and he lowered the gun slightly. “I had a new laser grid installed last week. When you entered the center of the garden, it set off a silent alarm inside the house.”

“Nice,” Trixie purred, winning her an even wider grin from the old man. “But how did you get downstairs so fast? We watched the light go off on the second floor.”

“The light was on a timer. I was on the first floor the whole time, waiting.”

“Fabulous,” I muttered. The old man was getting crafty and I was getting sloppy. Lesson learned? Don’t bring your sexy girlfriend along on a clandestine mission because you’ll get distracted thinking about taking her clothes off when you should be worried about infrared laser grids.

Unfortunately, things were about to get more complicated as I spied a moving shadow to the right of the old man. I stifled a curse. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t care to have a shotgun pointed in Trixie’s direction. As the shadow lunged at the old man, I pivoted on my right heel and plowed into Trixie, tackling her. Before we hit the ground, a shot echoed through the silent garden while buckshot ripped through plants directly overhead.

I raised up enough to look down at Trixie, her expression stunned. “He shot at us,” she gasped.

“More likely the gun accidentally went off when he was knocked to the ground. Old George might be pissed, but he isn’t the violent type. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I crushed plants instead of hitting concrete. What about my brother?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said in a growl.

Eldon’s timing was impeccable, leaving me to believe that the elf had been following us for quite a while. Not a good sign. As my problems with Reave grew more complicated, I didn’t want to worry about Trixie and the Summer Court as well.

Pushing back to my feet, I extended a hand to Trixie, helping her up as I looked over my shoulder. Eldon was kneeling over George’s body. I didn’t think he’d kill the old man, but then this guy had been hunting his sister for centuries to turn her over to a man she didn’t want to be with. There was no telling what Eldon was capable of.

I caught Trixie’s arm as she tried to move around me toward Eldon. “Cut a new flower and get out of the garden. I’ll be right behind you.”

“But—”

“Please. Eldon’s not here to cover our asses. He’ll follow. We’ve got to go. I’m sure the cops are on the way after the neighbors called in that gunshot.”

Trixie frowned, but still turned back toward the Asian Moon Lilies sitting serenely in their pots, watching this little play unravel. I jogged over to where Eldon was getting to his feet. He was frowning as well, but I never expected the elf to be happy to see me.

“Dead?” I asked.

“Unconscious. Are you done endangering my sister?”

I grinned, wishing I could put my fist into his pointed nose. “I would say she’s safer with me than in your hands, considering your plans for her.”

Even in the darkness, I could make out the flush that filled his pale cheeks while his eyes widened. “Life as consort to the king of the Summer Court is far preferable to a life as a . . . a . . . common—”

“Shut it, Eldon,” Trixie snapped as she came up behind me. As my smile grew, she turned her glare on me. “You too. We need to get out of here.”

Trixie led the way out of the garden, a brown paper bag clenched in one fist as she silently walked across the wide lawn to a stand of trees. I had parked my car on the other side a couple streets over. Eldon and I followed. No one spoke, mostly because neither Trixie nor I wanted to hear what had brought Eldon back to Low Town.

“Trix, wait,” I called as she made it to the tree line. We were away from the house and hidden enough that we wouldn’t draw the attention of the cops when they arrived. I couldn’t put it off any longer.

When she stopped and turned back to face her brother, I could see tears glistening in her wide eyes. She was scared, but then, so was I. Three centuries ago, Trixie had left her home with the Summer Court and gone into hiding because the king was determined to take her as a second wife. She had changed her name, changed her appearance, and was in constant hiding as she turned her back on her people and her family. Sadly, her brother was a member of the royal guard, and had spent the past three centuries pursuing his sister in hopes of dragging her home against her wishes.

Grabbing Trixie’s hand, I pulled her close, wrapping one arm around her waist. I needed to hold her, to feel her against me. If Eldon had come to take her back to the Summer Court, I had to hold her one last time because I knew that I’d either have to kill him or Trixie was going to run out of my life forever in hopes of staying out of the king’s clutches.