Chapter 18

Cole

Garden District, New Orleans, Louisiana

C ole pulled into the driveway. Traffic had been light, and the stop for food only took about twenty minutes, so, all told, he had gotten home to Evie earlier than expected. As he leaned over to retrieve the bags from the passenger seat, the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Something was very wrong. His head snapped around, his gaze darting from the backyard terrace then, past that, to the glass door that opened into the kitchen. Although he couldn’t see anything wrong, something felt off.

With a frown at the back door, Cole summoned just enough magic to see if he could sense anything. Nothing. Which was odd in itself. Ordinarily, the wards he set around the house buzzed against his skin like small jolts of lightning, but now… Nothing. He sent a subtle pulse into the house to see if there was anyone in there who shouldn’t be or foreign magic; he broke into a cold sweat when no magical trace came back to him at all. At a minimum, he should be able to sense his own wards and Evie, but he couldn’t sense either.

Cole’s fist tightened around the food bags, and he flung himself out of the car, throwing open the gate to the backyard and racing to the door. He jammed the key into the lock, blood pressure skyrocketing as it unlatched without him having to invert the wards. The door yawned open slowly, his keys still hanging from the lock. “Angel?” he shouted. Silence. “Evie?” No answer. He walked into the kitchen, dumping the bags on the counter as he paced around the island and into the dining room.

Wards down. Evie gone. What the fuck was going on? Nobody could get into this house except someone else whose source of power was death. Even human sacrifices to fuel magic weren't enough to unlock his wards. They could only be undone by someone who drew upon death itself to channel their magic. And people with that kind of ability were rare, bordering on nonexistent. He honestly thought he was the only one left… or he had until he walked into his house, its defenses easily dismantled.

But, most importantly, his witch was gone . His logic didn’t matter when she was fucking gone . Cole couldn’t breathe around the panic clawing its way up his chest. The house felt too silent around him, even with his own pulse thundering in his ears. A quick glance around the first floor revealed nothing. No Evie. He raced to the staircase, bounding up to the second floor, mumbling incantations to detect intruders as he went.

Each spell he cast came back with nothing, which, unfortunately, only told him that there were no human intruders or unskilled practitioners since there were absolutely magical beings that left zero trace of their presence. Shades, for example. A low grunt of concern rolled out of him. Cole knew better than most the damage those beings could do. His hand rose to where his throat was tingling at Aidoneus’ memory of being stabbed through the neck by a vengeful shade who had been able to sneak upon him because they gave off no magical signature. Cole may only have the former Lord of the Underworld's memories, but it didn’t negate their intensity.

His chest tightened in fear and rage. If somebody took her, if somebody so much as touched a single hair on her head, he would destroy their whole fucking world and then give his witch the match so she could torch the remnants.

The door to his bedroom was flung open, the sheets still rumpled from when they woke up that morning. He pressed his palm over his heart, the ache of seeing where they had slept together just hours ago almost palpable. A quick glance around confirmed that she wasn’t anywhere in the master suite, so he went down the hallway, checking each room quickly from the doorway to see if there were any signs of a struggle. Each one looked exactly the way he had left it that morning. His panic ratcheted up with every step he took. It was only when he came upon his study door—wide open although he knew it was shut earlier—that he entered a room. Crossing the threshold, he cast a wary eye around the area.

Nothing destroyed. No obvious struggles evident. Nothing out of place. As he turned to walk out of the room, though, something on his desk caught his eye. He pivoted, noticing the file splayed open on his desk, the papers it held jumbled but still contained within it. His brow furrowed. He could count on one hand the number of physical files he still had. Much like every other profession, the legal field changed significantly—if a bit more slowly—as the world transitioned to digital. The legacy files he was required by the state bar to maintain were preserved in a climate-controlled storage unit in keeping with the law until the firm could find an intern to begin the arduous process of scanning them in. The few non-legacy physical files the firm had were all at the office; he never brought physical files home with him, preferring to do any work from home digitally.

Cole strode to the desk, picked up the file, and groaned, sinking into his chair. That particular folder held the background information Charles had given him just days ago on Evangeline Dyeus. The papers were disheveled as if someone had rifled through them, and it wasn’t hard to guess who might have done that. To the right of the folder, far enough away that he knew Evie had to have picked it up and dropped it suddenly, was the page detailing Evangeline Dyeus’ biographical information.

They hadn’t actually talked about her life outside of the coven besides when he called her Evangeline that first time he saw her. She corrected him then, though, didn’t she? Told him her name was Evie. He thought it was simply because she preferred to be called Evie, but what if it was bigger than that? He shoved a hand through his hair. Hell, they hadn’t even resolved that she actually was Evangeline Dyeus, much less whether she knew who she might be.

But honestly? It didn’t matter to him whether she was just Evie or the allegedly deceased Evangeline Dyeus. He only knew that he felt a connection with her that went deeper than anything he had ever felt before with anyone else. He knew her all his life through his dreams. When he was with her, the world felt stable and real and happy in a way it never had before. He had to find her. Now. He didn’t give a shit who she had been, only that she was his now.

Dropping the file back on the desk, he pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking through the options. He had a theory about where she had gone. It seemed unlikely that she would just go on walkabout around New Orleans. Much more probable that she returned to the forest . In a haze, he stood up and walked out of the room and back down the stairs, eerily calm as he collected his wallet and keys and went to the car.

Todd stood on the other side of the fence, his attention turning from an unknown something in his backyard to Cole when the gate slammed behind him. “Hey, Cole,” he said, his voice shaking a bit. Ah, the wonderful effects of a threat to drag one’s soul into Tartarus. Cole gave the man a terse nod, already halfway into his seat when Todd gathered his wits about him just enough to say, “Hey, uh, I saw your girl from last night leaving the house this morning.”

Cole paused, one leg planted in the driver’s side footwell, an arm extended over the top of the car. “Which way did she go, Todd?” On a good day, he barely had time for Todd’s particular brand of bullshit. Today? He couldn’t even manage the niceties.

Todd’s voice lost its uncertain waver at the direct question. “Towards St. Charles, I think, after she stared at the cemetery for a little bit.” Seeming more comfortable now that they'd had an interaction without threats of violence, Todd added, “Pretty little thing. She looked like she would be a fun time.”

“Excuse me?” Cole pressed himself away from the car and rounded the bumper, not bothering to close the driver's side door in his fury. All the fear, the rage, the absolute helplessness and madness he had barely kept a handle on since he got home to find his Evie gone now simmered to the forefront and found a target: Todd. His imbecile of a neighbor who appeared to have a death wish. “What. The. Fuck. Did you just say about her?”

To his idiot neighbor’s credit, he worked out his error quickly and began sputtering apologies immediately. To his idiot neighbor’s detriment, Cole couldn’t care less about the lame attempt at reconciliation and was already stalking towards Todd, stopping only inches from the other man.

“I thought I made myself abundantly fucking clear when you saw her last night that you weren’t to say a goddamned word about her or even look at her ever again, you inconsequential asshole.” The world became soaked in blue as his magic surged. He could easily rip this shithead’s soul from his chest with the magic flooding his body and—if the Underworld were actually open—chuck it into the depths of Tartarus alongside the Titans, who would surely have a blast with the puny human. With his magically enhanced vision, he could already see Todd’s soul, ready to be stripped from his body, although—Cole frowned—it had an unusual, pitch black tar look to it unlike the incandescent glow most humans put off.

Without an open Underworld, though, Todd’s separated soul would simply stay in the human realm, wreaking more havoc. Cole needed Evie to access the Underworld and, as much as he might like to destroy Todd right now, he couldn’t send yet another shade out among the humans. There were too many of them already. So, for the moment, unhinged threats would have to do. “Let me explain something to you, Todd,” he sneered down into his shorter neighbor’s face. “You would do well to never speak about her ever fucking again. In fact, I would recommend that you forget about her existence altogether. I would hate to have to find out how great it would be to have a new neighbor because you just disappeared.”

“Are you threatening me, Cole?” Todd’s jaw tightened, his brown eyes narrowing on Cole.

Cole chuckled grimly. “Todd, you’re not smart—you calling my woman a ‘pretty little thing’ proved it, just in case there was any doubt—but I would think you're at least intelligent enough to get that, yes, I am in fact threatening you. But, just in case you’re unclear, let me clarify a bit. If you go anywhere near her, I will destroy you. I will remove your limbs from your body and dump them in the bayou for the 'gators to feast on right before I rip your worthless soul from your body and torture it in ways that even I can’t fathom. You saw something you were never supposed to see and then you made the mistake of commenting on it when you should have kept it to your fucking self. And do you want to know something?” Todd blanched as Cole continued, but his icy gaze never wavered from Cole’s. “Nobody will ever know that you went missing because no one cares about you. And, if by some miracle, somebody wonders where you are, nobody will think to look at the lawyer , the partner of an internationally recognized firm and local philanthropist, who lives next door.” Todd’s face was the color of curdled milk when Cole returned to his car and started the engine. “Anyways. Have a great day, Todd.”

Cole pulled into the street, heading towards St. Charles. Todd hadn’t specified when Evie had left, but Cole had been at work for—he snuck a quick look at the clock in the upper corner of the car's entertainment center and calculated quickly—a good seven hours before he left the office to come home. Add the thirty or so minute drive home and the panicked search of his home, and it was closing in on 5:00. She had a significant lead on him, assuming she figured out a way to get to the forest that was faster than walking.

His blood froze in his veins at the thought of her strolling along the side of the freeway. So help him, if she fucking walked to the preserve, he would put her over his knee, spank her ass red, then lock her in his fucking bedroom until she learned not to put her damn self in danger.

He kept his eyes peeled as he drove, but he didn’t catch any sigh of a red-haired witch along St. Charles, the Westbank Expressway, or Barataria Boulevard. Her absence along the roadway just raised the question of how she actually managed to leave the city. Did she climb into another person's car? The hair rose on the back of his neck. Getting into stranger’s cars was dangerous at the best of times. It took on an extra element of recklessness when you were a barefoot woman wearing what he assumed—what he hoped—was only one of his shirts since her dress was getting dry cleaned, courtesy of a lunchtime detour before the accounting meeting from hell.

And, fuck, what if he was completely wrong, and she didn’t even go to the forest at all? Cole’s imagination spiraled, providing him with a variety of horrific things that could happen to a small woman in New Orleans. It wasn’t an unsafe city, but any city could be dangerous to someone unfamiliar with it. And Evie… well, she was as unfamiliar with the city as anyone could possibly be.

He took a few stabilizing breaths, forcing himself to be rational. He was known for being coldly logical everywhere; he needed to channel that, so he didn’t lose his mind to the panic trying to overtake him. Evie was a powerful damn witch. She had reconstituted an entire section of the forest from a devastated construction site within minutes. She managed to undo his wards with death magic—a fact that still shocked him—without destroying his house, something few could manage; those wards were damn powerful, and improper manipulation would result in an explosion the likes of which the Garden District had never seen, not to mention a magical warning to him. If she left and somebody had taken her, he should probably be more concerned for the abductor than for her.

At least that’s what he told himself. In reality, his heart was beating inhumanly fast as he pulled off to the side of the road by the reforested construction site. He threw open the car door and stepped out, drawing to his full height, gaze fixed across on the trees across the way as the humid winter breeze blew around him, tousling his hair and carrying the rich scent of the bayou to him. He slammed the car door shut and crossed the small shoulder between him and the preserve quickly, thankful for the complete lack of vehicle or foot traffic in the area. While the locals may not remember a random person walking towards the forest, they would probably remember a tall stranger in a suit who abandoned his car on the side of the road.

Four men stood shouting next to a digger hoisted high in the air and speared through its center by a tree trunk at least five feet in diameter. Fortunately, they were too wrapped up in themselves and the complete nullification of their work to notice anything around them. Without a sound, Cole passed them quickly, entering the forest unseen by the group.