Everspell (15 page)

“Yes!” I hollered. “And we need to leave now!”

Elizabeth grabbed her keys out of my hands. “Why didn’t you say something earlier! Lily! You go with Serena! I’ll take Tabitha!” She flew out the door, my little sister in tow.”

Lily turned to Declan. “I’m sorry. I have to go. You do understand?” She ushered him out the door and we followed right after him. I dreaded telling her the truth. I hoped Eden would do that, right after she told me what in the world
that
had been all about.

Chapter Twenty-three

SERENA

By the time we got home, I prayed Eden would know how to handle this situation. I pulled up to the house only a few seconds after Tabitha and Elizabeth. Lily jumped out of the car before I turned it off and flew into the house, two steps behind Elizabeth. I hung back with Tabitha, both of us unsure of what to do next. We waited about five minutes by the car before we went inside.

We found Lily and Elizabeth sitting side by side on the front room sofa facing Eden, who sat on a chair across from them. Clearly, Eden had told them Jade hadn’t been in an accident. And just as clearly, they were both quite angry.

“Why in the world would you tell us something so awful if it wasn’t true, Eden?” Lily awaited an explanation, her hands on her hips and her foot tapping impatiently on the floor.

“What could be so important that you had to lie to get us home?” Elizabeth sounded indignant. “Couldn’t you have just asked us to close the shop early, or something? It had to be a horrible lie?”

Eden stood her ground. Calmly, she said, “You had to be extracted from the situation with no delay.”

Lily, whirled, incensed. “Extracted? Situation? I think you had better tell us what is going on, Eden. You embarrassed me in front of Declan.”

“Yes, Lily. I know. It couldn’t be helped. You needed to be extracted.”

“Stop saying extracted!”

Eden took a breath. “Removed, then. Declan was the reason you needed to be removed.”

Elizabeth smacked her hand hard on her thigh. “I knew it! I knew there had to be something about him.” She twisted on the couch to face Eden. “Is he a demon, Eden? Is he with Christophe?”

Eden stood and smoothed her hair. She walked toward the window and paused there for a moment. Finally, she turned and faced Lily. “I don’t know. But the best information being gathered at this time says he
may
have been attempting to get to Jade and going through you, Lily, to accomplish this task. We don’t yet know what he might have done, but I wasn’t waiting to find out this time around. If Serena and Tabitha weren’t there, I’m not sure how we would have gotten you out. Thank goodness you were there.” Eden directed this last statement at me, but I couldn’t take all the credit.

“To be honest, Eden, Logan is the one who asked me to stop by.”

“Logan? Serena, Logan continues to impress me. He may not even know how intuitive his powers are becoming.”

Tabitha interjected. “He’s calling right now, Serena.” She held my cell phone out to me.

“What the heck happened?” I stepped into the kitchen and explained everything to him.

“I knew I didn’t like that guy.”

“It may have been a mother-son thing, but turns out you were right. He could be some kind of henchman for Christophe. Creeping around right under our noses.”

“And gunning for my sister. The damned are getting a little too close for comfort, Serena.”

“I know. Will you be home soon?” I suddenly found that I wanted him near.

“Yep. Told Sully about it and he started shoving people out the door. He couldn’t close up fast enough. We’re leaving shortly.”

“Good. See you soon.” I hung up and rejoined the others. Finola and Prudence had appeared and everyone else had crowded around Lily. I questioned Tabitha about Jade with my eyes. She jerked her head upwards. I understood. Jade must be upstairs napping. Good. She didn’t need to be a part of this drama. I had to talk to everyone because I thought I had just figured out why Christophe had returned. I addressed the crowd.

“I feel like we should take this into the family room and discuss what to do next. Eden, would you agree?”

“Absolutely. The day’s events warrant discussion. Everyone? Let’s relocate.”

We all followed Eden to the back of the house, stopping off in the kitchen for coffee and water, and made ourselves comfortable in the cozy surroundings of our back den. When everyone had seated themselves, Eden began the informal gathering.

“Since there are only a few of us here, I don’t want to make any decisions. But it appears Serena has something important she wants to say. Serena, the floor is yours.”

I spoke up. “It’s obvious to me that Christophe is taking a completely different approach this time. We know he’s after our DNA.” I referred to myself, Tabitha, and Jade. “He attempted to obtain it first last year by abducting me at the St. Patrick’s Day party. Then, when he resurfaced after the ground-breaking at the old barn site, he went after Tabitha by sending the teenaged were-dogs after her. They succeeded in drawing her blood at that library, but thankfully, Elizabeth was able to recover the vials and destroy the creatures in time to prevent them from taking the samples back to Christophe.” I shuddered remembering how close a call that had been. Across the room, Tabitha lowered her head. I knew she must be remembering it, too.

“This last attempt is the most insidious. He went after Jade, again.” I searched the room for Lily. “You see, I think he must be mad at himself for not realizing that he had the DNA he so desperately wants the first time he kidnapped Jade.” I glanced up to see Logan and Sully enter the room. I wanted to stop and run over and hug Logan. But, I went on.

I had to.

“He didn’t realize Jade represented part of the bloodline the first time he had her when he kidnapped her and Sully from the picnic. I think he’s back because he’s furious he made a mistake. He had a way to get the DNA he wanted the whole time he had Jade, and he never realized it. He’s back for revenge. He’s back this time to get it right. I don’t even think he knows she’s pregnant. Or that it’s twins. He’s back to correct his mistake.”

Chapter Twenty-four

LOGAN

This was crazy. First, they want to use my mom as a decoy for that freak Declan, probably a demon sent by Christophe. For all I knew, he could be Christophe himself. Then I find out not only is my sister pregnant, but she’s pregnant with twins and married to Sully! I started to think this might be too much for even me to take. I wasn’t kidding before when I told Serena I always thought we would be the next ones taking that plunge. It made me a little jealous, even a little sad that it wasn’t us. But, I
was
happy for Jade because of how happy she looked. And how big. Man, my sister got huge!

“I know I haven’t known Jade that long, but I’m pretty sure you better never let her hear you even think that about her.” Skylar walked into the room. As usual, I forgot that in this house my own thoughts are never
only
my own. I looked behind him hoping no one was with him.

“Don’t worry, Logan. I’m alone. No one but me heard you.”

I let out my breath in a huff. “Dodged a bullet on that one, partner. I’ve lived with that girl all my life. She’d have skinned me alive.” I changed the subject. “So, what’s going on?”

Skylar took a chair from the kitchen table. We were by ourselves, and it was so unlike this big, full house to have no one wandering in and out of the area. I wanted to take advantage of our time alone. I had the feeling Skylar had been keeping something from Sully and me and this seemed the perfect opportunity to get him to talk about it. When Skylar leaned forward in his chair toward me, I knew I was right.

Skylar started to say something, then stopped. He seemed to be struggling with his word choice, as if he wasn’t sure how to start. I thought I could help him.

“Skylar, I know there’s something you’re not telling me. I think you’ll feel better if you just spit it out. Get it over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid. How bad can it be?” I chuckled and slapped him lightly on the shoulder. I thought he’d lighten up a bit, but he just looked at me and shook his head.

“You’re not going to like it, Logan.”

“If I was going to love it, I’m guessing you’d have told me by now.” I kept my tone casual, but I started to get a bad feeling.

“I’ve been getting some, well, ah, I guess you’d call them ‘communications’ lately.”

“What? Like letters? Smoke signals? What are we talking about here? And why are you being so secretive about it?”

“Well, first, it’s not letters, it’s not anything you’d call conventional. And I’m not hollering about it to anyone because I don’t know who it is trying to connect with me, or why,” Skylar sounded almost scared.

The bad feeling rose in my throat and sat there like a ball of uncooked dough. I swallowed it down and coughed a couple of times.

“Okay, I get it. This crowd isn’t exactly laid back lately. Everything is a crisis. So, give me the details.”

Skylar told me about the first time he communicated with some kind of entity in our beat-up old computer. I tried to remain impassive during his explanation, but in reality, I had about a million questions. I struggled not to pepper Skylar with them. “Do you have any idea who you were talking to?”

“Nope. Only ID given was ‘a friend’.”

“It could be a trick of Christophe’s.”

“It could. But, I don’t think it is. I don’t know why, but when I sat there writing back and forth, I got the impression of dealing with a benevolent being, not an evil one. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. I spent, like, my whole life with Christophe and the old Council, and this just doesn’t feel like them.”

“Have you tried to make contact here?”

“No way! There are
way
too many people here to even try. The privacy factor is close to zero in this packed house, man.”

“So, that only leaves one choice, then.”

“What’s that?”

“Road trip! We’re going back to the bachelor pad and see if we can raise the spook, so to speak, on the computer back at our old digs.”

“You think Eden’s going to let us go?”

“Don’t plan on asking.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t go all fraidy-cat on me, Skylar. We need to see if we can ID whoever your new pen pal is. You’ve got my curiosity up, now.”

“Let’s do it.”

****

It had been so long since I had been to the old bachelor digs, it felt great just to walk into the place. Skylar and I opened the front door and it felt like we were unsealing a tomb. The atmosphere was stuffy and stifling. I opened a couple windows so the air would start circulating, then we both headed over to the tiny desk in the corner of the room. The old, out of date computer sat on top of it, with the keyboard balanced on the edge, exactly as we left it when Skylar, Sully and I all relocated to Serena’s big house several weeks ago.

“Okay, what should I do?” Skylar dragged another chair over to the computer desk so we could both sit facing the screen.

“I don’t know. Do whatever you did the last time you made contact.” I leaned under the desk and booted up the CPU. The screen crackled to life and I turned to Skylar. “Okay, where were you?”

“I can’t remember. I’d been either surfing the net or in a Word document.”

“So, start by surfing the net.”

“Logan, I don’t know if this is going to work. What if the thing, whatever it is, what if it knows that I’m not here alone? What if it won’t come out?”

“Then it won’t come out. And all that happened is we tried. No harm, no foul.”

Skylar looked at me for a few minutes, then turned back to the computer. He tapped keys until I saw that he had opened two applications. He surfed the net in one and opened a Word document in another. Then, he leaned back and we both sat there, staring at the screen. I honestly didn’t think anything would happen.

Until it did.

With no previous warning, the screen flashed, went blank and words began to appear by themselves on the blank canvas.

Skylar grabbed my arm and shot me a look. He mouthed the words “It’s him.”

We both sat stunned as the words began to form.

—So, we meet again—

Skylar looked at me and I nodded. I figured whoever was making contact wanted to talk to him, not me. He better be the one responding.

—Do I know you?—
Skylar typed.

—No. But you will. I see you brought a friend—

—He’s more than a friend—

—I understand—

—Who are you?—

—In due time. You are in danger—

—No kidding. That’s kind of old news—

—So you are aware of Christophe?—

I leaned over to Skylar. “That answers at least one question of who is contacting you. We know it’s not Christophe now.”

—Yes. We are aware of Christophe—

—And who is we? Who is your friend?—

Skylar started to type, but I stopped him. “Not so fast. This may be the only trump card we have. Offer to show him yours if he shows you his.” Skylar looked at me with a funny look, so I simplified it for him. “Tell him you won’t tell him who I am until he tells you who he is.” Recognition dawned on Skylar’s face and he bent low and started typing.

—Tell me who you are first—

—Ah. So you think you have a bargaining chip—

—I just think it’s fair—

—The time is not right—

Skylar turned to me and started to speak. “Logan, I don’t think this is going to work.” Suddenly, the screen flashed and again went blank. A single word appeared and blinked on and off on the dark square. My name.

—Logan?—

Skylar looked like someone had shocked him with a cattle prod. “Holy smokes, Logan! It can hear us! I think it knows you.

I hardly heard a word Skylar said. Because I knew that whoever had tried to contact Skylar
did
know me. And the reason he knew me so well? We were related.