27. Chapter 27

Damn it all.

I was still riding high on the feeling of the new bonds that had just settled into my aura. And on the knowledge that they wanted to stay. Aahil, Zhong, Niamh, Ambrose, and Hasumi… they all wanted a closer bond with me. Something permanent. Which meant they didn"t intend to leave the minute we were out of this pocket world and life was back to normal.

It was my biggest wish suddenly come true. I didn"t have to ask, to plead my case and stand there twisting in the wind, hoping for a reply but never really expecting it would be the one I wanted—that was the way I had envisioned this going, anytime I let myself think about what might come, if we managed to live through the current dangers surrounding us. But this… to have all this devotion and love offered up without my even asking. It was earthshaking.

And yet.

Despite all that love and surety, there was still a sad emptiness in the dark corners of my heart. Elijah couldn"t bond to me the way the others had—at least as far as I knew. I"d have to ask. Regardless, I knew he would if given the chance. But Dyre. Dyre had already had this bond and chose to dissolve it. I didn"t have to ask him. I already knew his answer. And it was a resounding, "No fucking thanks."

The rejection hurt, yes. But it was more than that. By rejecting me and severing our connection, he severed my connection to Sunny as well. The wraith and I got no say in that. And there was also the lingering conviction, no matter how hard I tried to just let Dyre have his space and his right to his own free will… there was this voice inside me that insisted he wasn"t being true to what he wanted. That he was still acting out of a sense of what he thought he should do, rather than what he truly wanted in his heart.

But I didn"t have time to examine any of that mushy, thoroughly distracting nonsense right now. Because the real world—the world outside our precarious little bubble—demanded attention. I picked up the pamphlet that had just arrived and plopped my ass heavily into one of the kitchen chairs. "Gather round, folks," I muttered, "story time."

Dyre hesitated in the doorway, clearly torn between escaping the animosity of his fellow housemates and my awkward presence, or staying to hear what news this latest delivery brought. In the end, he squared his shoulder and came over to join us. Every line of his long, lean body radiated tension, but his eyes met mine across the table and he gave me a terse, "Get on with it."

I sighed and dropped my eyes to the news pamphlet. I read what it said, then read it again out loud. It sounded like something out of a movie. "While the Supernatural Alliance wages its questionable war on the witch supremacist zealots, it has come to our attention that a third faction has entered the fray." I looked up at the faces around me with a wry snort. The Alliance might try to make people think they were gallantly defending everyone from the supremacists, but I was pretty sure they were one-in-the-same, at least on some level. Dropping my eyes to the pamphlet, I continued. "A group of non-human creatures, along with a handful of witches and other magic users, have grown quite fed up with the games and manipulations of our dear police force and their opponents. (Though one questions if they are really opponents at all.) We have it on good authority that if you are not a power-hungry witch or a loyal Alliance drone, you might be wise to keep your eyes and ears peeled for a certain flowery symbol of change."

I stared at the words again as I tried to wrap my mind around what they were saying. "Great. So someone is trying to start an uprising." I rubbed a hand over my face and tossed the stupid pamphlet back onto the table. Absolutely none of this was helpful. The puny little creature resistance wouldn"t hold up against the SA with their resources or the witch supremacists, who would have no compunction about using magic to murder them before they even had a chance to speak up. If anything, the two organizations would just work together to get rid of the inconvenience oruse it as a distraction while they continued to work together to grab up magical artifacts and amass power, all the better to control the populous.

Everyone else was busy muttering about what this meant. I bowed my head to rub my hands over my face, sick of how stuck I felt. As if we were trapped here while the world fell apart and the magic holding the pocket world together disintegrated around us. But the motion had me looking down. And I noticed something in my lap. A little slip of paper had fallen out of the pamphlet and landed there, a silvery sheen glinting on its surface.

"Guys?" I said, drawing everyone"s attention as I held the bit of paper up between my thumb and forefinger. When I touched it, writing appeared, the silvery stuff on the paper drawing in on itself, coalescing into a looping gunmetal scrawl. Magic hummed under my touch, and I jumped. "Fuck!" I dropped the paper, and it fluttered to the floor.

My eyes went to the various magical creatures around me before landing on Dyre"s piercing violet gaze. "You feel that?"

He nodded once, his motion curt. "Spelled." Coming around the table, he pushed Zhong aside and knelt, dark magic flowing through him as Sunny protected them both. Then he reached out and picked up the paper.

Nothing happened. It remained a piece of crisp white paper with a shimmery surface. Dyre frowned as he examined it. Then he looked like someone had punched him in the gut before he regained his composure again and glanced up at me. "It"s a charm that makes it so only the intended recipient can read it. Fairly powerful magic, but well within the skill level of your family. Our family." His jaw clenched for a moment before he added, "I used to use this charm when I sent letters to someone and didn"t want prying eyes involved. I found it in an old grimoire somewhere, so it was probably family knowledge."

I knew from the way he spoke just who that someone was. I wanted to tell him he didn"t have to speak that way, as if his past love was a taboo topic. Or as if he and I were siblings or something. Our family. Ridiculous. It was possible I shared as much DNA with the local grocer back home as with this infuriating man. But it was useless telling him any of that. And besides, we had bigger issues right now. "So, it"s spelled specifically to me. And it"s a charm that might have been passed down through your family, or found by my family at some point and incorporated into our spell books."

At his nod, I threw caution to the wind and grabbed the paper out of his hand. Niamh hissed my name in reprimand for my reckless behavior and Elijah hovered close. But I was pretty sure this particular magic wasn"t going to hurt me. The words instantly began appearing again the moment I touched the paper. I held it up so I could read what was written in what I assumed was my sister"s handwriting. I wouldn"t really know, given that I hadn"t been around her since I was a child.

"What is it?" Aahil demanded. "What does it say? I can"t tell if that constipated expression on your face is because of a death threat or because you"ve been cursed."

I shook my head. A death threat might be preferable. Simpler to deal with anyway. "It"s a location," I informed the room at large. "A meeting place." I looked up. "I think we"re being invited to join the resistance."

The room erupted into chaos around me.

"It has to be Bella and Junaid," Zhong insisted. "This is them organizing some way for us to fight back."

Niamh nodded as she tapped one finger on the hilt of her dagger. "It"s likely. And it"s about fucking time we actually did something, rather than standing around here waiting."

Ambrose, Hasumi, and Elijah seemed to be on the fence.

But Dyre was coldly adamant in his caution. "We have no guarantee that these deliveries are actually coming from Belladonna at all. Anyone with access to a little Lovell blood could be sending them. For all we know, your sister is in an Alliance prison, and they are using her to find us." His violet eyes bore into me. "Or it could be the supremacists. They would love to get their hands on a matched set of Lovells. You saw what the O"Learys were about. And they were bumbling idiots. Belladonna could have fallen into much worse hands. Not everyone is as altruistic and good as you want them to be, Oleander."

I stared back at him for a moment while the others argued. They wanted me to be safe. They wanted us to do something. They threw out what-ifs and conjecture. But I had already decided. I glanced down again at the perfect outline of a white oleander bloom, sketched on the bottom of the note. The "flowery symbol of change," I assumed.

"I"m going," I said as I pushed my chair back and stood. "You all can stay here if you want. But I"m going. I don"t want to get pulled into a freaking war any more than you do. But there has to be some happy medium. And I will not sit here on my ass hoping our hiding spot holds while a bunch of jackasses take over the world. Not when there might be some small thing we can do to help. At the very least, maybe we can do something to clear our names and get the SA to stop hunting us."

That was not what they wanted to hear. But I don"t think any of them were truly surprised by my words.

"Of course we"re not letting you go alone," Niamh said immediately. "Don"t be stupid, Andy."

Zhong nodded his agreement. "Where you go, I go, master."

Ambrose slapped the bigger man on the back and nodded at me in silent agreement.

Aahil shook his head at me as if he was disappointed that he even had to tell me how he felt. "You are mine, Lovell. Of course I will burn your enemies to ash." He smiled, his evil smirk so like the Aahil of old. "It would be my pleasure to make them cower."

I rolled my eyes. "Aahil, we"re not going there to kill people. It"s just a meeting. We can get some first-hand information on what"s going on and figure out what to do from there."

He waved my words away with a muttered, "Boring."

Hasumi touched my shoulder. "I will go. I can read and influence those gathered."

I nodded. Of course. Having that kind of influence over an assembled group of possibly volatile strangers would be a very powerful defense.

"Okay, well, that"s decided then," I said flatly. "The meeting is tomorrow night. In Magea, if I"m reading this thing right," I said, waving the slip of paper, "there are coded hints here that provide directions. Anyone who wants to go can go with me. And if you don"t want to go, then stay behind." My eyes lit on Dyre with a meaningful glance.

I might feel better with a necromancer at my back. But I wasn"t about to coerce him into going on an outing that might be a trap. After all, his suspicions could be correct. I might be about to royally fuck up.

He just rolled his eyes. "No one is staying behind," he snapped. "If you get yourself killed, the pocket world will collapse. Anyone left behind would die."

I sighed. I hadn"t thought of that. If I went, it really did kind of force them all to go along. "I"m sorry," I said sincerely. "But I can"t just sit here going stir crazy."

He stared me down for a long moment before he finally spoke. "I never said you should. I simply think we should be cautious and not believe everything we see or hear. Even if it is Bella sending these letters, we still can"t be sure of her motives."

I nodded. "On that, we can agree. I"m not that na?ve, Dyre. I am a Lovell, after all. I was bred, born, and raised for evil."

He didn"t speak. But I knew what he was thinking. We both were. Because his family was just as bad as mine, if not worse. And it was his blood that had founded my own.

"That"s not necessarily a bad thing, in this case," Ambrose said, slapping Dyre on the back just a little too hard, jolting him out of his dark thoughts. "If we can think like the enemy, we"ll be one step ahead, right?"

Elijah hovered over to me, half his body gliding through the table. "I think in this instance, it also doesn"t hurt to have at least a little bit of faith." He sighed a gusty ghost sigh. "As jaded as I am, even I have to admit, there is still goodness in the world. There is evil. But there is also goodness in the hearts of many, still." His burning ghostly blue eye orbs swung from me to Dyre and back again. "And you should know you are not the sum of your ancestors" actions. You have their gifts, but your own heart."

And with that painfully insightful bit of wisdom, the ghost disappeared, flowing back into his anchoring charm.