Carnival of Secrets (29 page)

W
HEN
K
ALEB RETURNED TO
the human world, he went directly to the witches. A daimon walking up to the witches’ stronghold was sheer stupidity, but unfortunately, the Stoneleigh-Ross offices were where the missing witch worked.

Kaleb made it as far as the front door. The ward there was one that he couldn’t cross; it didn’t knock him on his ass like Adam’s spells had, but it made the air feel like a solid wall to him.

Plan B.

He flipped open the phone he’d procured specifically to call Mallory, pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, and punched in the number he’d copied from a list on the front of Mallory’s refrigerator that morning. When the receptionist at Stoneleigh-Ross answered, he said, “I need to reach Adam Rothesay. It’s urgent.”

“Mr. Rothesay is—”

“I know what you are.” He looked at the front door and bluffed. “I’m standing at the edge of your ward, and unless someone comes out here to talk to me, I’ll bring more daimons to tear down the damn building if I need to.”

“Please hold while I connect your call.”

Kaleb felt the tension growing in the air around him, as if the empty space was filling with invisible briars, and snarled, “Don’t toss spells at me. I’m here to try to help find Adam Rothesay. I think he’s in trouble.”

The air didn’t become clear, but the invisible tangled growth didn’t expand either.

Several moments passed before a man in faded jeans and a white oxford shirt came through the front doors and walked toward Kaleb. Thin silver-framed glasses, high-gloss shoes, and a silver watch added to the overall image of casual ease. The smile on his face and his unhurried stride contrasted with the cutting energy that lashed around both of Kaleb’s ankles as invisible manacles held him in place.

“Kaleb, I presume?”

Kaleb nodded.

“Adam’s told us about you,” the man said conversationally. “We feel it only fair to let you know that we will enforce his paternal claims. Those claims prohibit Mallory’s removal to The City.”

“I’m not trying to take her to The City.” Kaleb tried to keep his voice even as well, but he wasn’t as adept at ignoring magically induced pain as he was at pushing past physical pain.
That
he’d had plenty of experience in, but until he’d met Adam, he’d had no contact with the sort of witches that existed in the human world. “Her
true
father has given her to me as a wife, and marriage invalidates the witch’s claims of paternity.”

“We enforce the law here,” the man continued as if Kaleb hadn’t spoken. “Mallory, as daughter of a witch, will be kept out of The City until she reaches her majority. As she just turned seventeen—”

“We’re wed. None of Adam’s claims matter now, but I’m not here because of that.” Kaleb tried to ignore the creeping sensation around his calves. The vines he couldn’t see were twined around his skin, tightening as they spread. “Someone broke into her house last night, and Adam is missing. She’s
worried
.”

The vines released all at once. “Her home was actually entered?”

“Not by much. He reached inside, and the wards . . . resolved the matter.” Kaleb resisted the urge to step back. His instinct was to move away from whatever had entangled him, but magic wasn’t always rooted. It was just as likely that he’d be trapped by moving backward.

“The body?”

“I handled it,” Kaleb said.

“Do you swear that you are not intending on retrieving Miss Rothesay—”

“Do you think I’m a wet pup that I’ll give you a
vow
?” Kaleb laughed. “If Adam couldn’t get a vow from me, you sure as hell won’t.” He didn’t wince at the stinging sensation that made it seem as if hot ashes were being poured into his ears.

They aren’t. It’s illusion.

Still, Kaleb let his teeth show a little despite his best intentions. “Do you know where Adam is? If he’s not missing, it would be good to know that.”

The witch looked Kaleb over from head to toe, and then frowned. “We don’t answer to d—”

“My wife loves Adam. If he’s not in
this
world, I need to make inquiries in The City,” Kaleb pointed out as calmly as he was able.

“Why?”

“Because it’s what Mallory will want.” He felt his claws begin to extend as his hold on his temper started to fail. “What I need is to know if Adam is in this world and to know that if Adam is in The City, Mallory still has the protection of the witches while I go try to retrieve him.”

The witch said nothing, but Kaleb didn’t expect any real help from witches.

Except Aya.

She was his next recourse. He couldn’t take Mallory home, but Aya was an invaluable resource in this world. She couldn’t expose what she was in The City, but here she could function openly as a witch.

“I will relay your words to my superior when she returns to the office.” The witch turned his back and left Kaleb there. For a moment, the air held him in place, and then as the door to the office building closed behind the witch, Kaleb was released.

B
Y THE TIME
K
ALEB
had returned to his world that morning, Mallory was certain that her father was in real trouble. He hadn’t called; the office hadn’t called. There was no way he would avoid her like this just to escape answering questions.
He could spell me again to keep me from asking.
The only options Mallory had left to her were to seek out Evelyn or to find whatever Adam took in case she had to bargain with daimons.

Evelyn wasn’t accepting Mallory’s calls, so Mallory went into her father’s room and searched it as best she could. Whatever the mystery treasure was, he’d hid it well. The trunk held a bunch of weathered old books, grimoires and journals, and several scrolls. A few knives in different metals and one carved bone ladle rested atop the books. She ran her fingers over each item, wishing that she had even a measure of her father’s witchery.

“How do I know what it is?”

Although she had no magical ability, she had sufficient familiarity with magic to know that a magical object would feel different and that a perfectly mundane item could very well be the thing that the daimons sought. Not all precious objects looked like riches. It could be a book, a scroll, a blade, a ladle, or something entirely different. Tears slid down her cheeks as she thought about her father. He would’ve called by now if he was able. That meant he was injured or a prisoner somewhere—because she refused to even consider that he could be dead—and she had no idea where or why.

She wiped at the tears on her cheek. She wasn’t naive enough to believe he would vanish without calling her, especially when she had been sick.

If not for the fact that Adam knew what Kaleb was and hadn’t banned him from her life, Mallory would have turned away from him the instant she’d learned what he was.
A daimon shows up, and Adam vanishes.
It seemed more than mildly suspicious, but Adam had allowed Kaleb into their home. There had to have been a reason, and right now, the only resources she had were Kaleb—
who is a freaking daimon
—and Evelyn. The older witch was Adam’s only living family, but Mallory had agreed with her mother’s stance on Evelyn: venomous serpents were more affectionate, safer, and generally warmer. Kaleb, on the other hand, had been caring, and Mallory had trouble believing that someone she felt so connected to was all bad.

The hours passed, and the search of her father’s room yielded no secrets. A few items felt different as she handled them, and she suspected that they were magical in some way. That didn’t make any of them the item valuable enough to cause daimons to pursue them for years. It also didn’t mean that any of them revealed anything about where her father might be.

By midday, she was frustrated and no closer to an answer than when she started. She’d called the office again, her father’s emergency contacts, and his cell number. No one had seen him, and he wasn’t answering. She didn’t have Evelyn’s private number, and the witch still wasn’t returning any of Mallory’s calls through the office. That meant Mallory was going to have to go to the Stoneleigh-Ross office. It was something Adam insisted she was to do only in an emergency, but his disappearance was a definite emergency.

Mallory pulled on her coat and a few weapons, and set off to Stoneleigh-Ross. She was a block from the office when she saw Evelyn and two teens close to her own age. Rather than feeling relief at spotting the witch she’d been on her way to see, she felt a flicker of alarm. Evelyn always unnerved her, but the way the strangers stared at her made her even less comfortable.

“Mallory.” Evelyn nodded. There was no illusion of affection, no warmth in her smile. “What are you doing out here?”

“Coming to see you.”

That
got a reaction. Evelyn’s witch-blue eyes widened. “Does Adam know?”

“No.” Mallory’s hand rested in her pocket, where she could reach through the slit and draw the gun at her hip. It was hidden under her long coat, and she didn’t want to be obvious about it, but she also didn’t like feeling vulnerable. “My father didn’t come home last night.”

“I see.” Evelyn was as poised as if Mallory had inquired about her shoes.

Mallory gripped the handle. “He trusts you, and I don’t know who else to ask for help.”

“I’ll look into it.” Evelyn offered what passed as a smile. “In the interim, I want to introduce you to my daughter. Aya, meet Mallory. Aya, meet your cousin.”

“My . . .” Mallory scowled. “Dad never mentioned a cousin.”

The girl, who looked very little like her mother, stepped forward. She was muscular where Evelyn was slight; her eyes were brown rather than the telltale witch’s blue and gold; and her short hair was the thick straight brown of a wolf’s pelt instead of the silky raven-black of Evelyn’s hair.

“You don’t have witch eyes,” Mallory said simply. She looked at the boy who stood protectively beside Aya. “
Neither
of you.”

“Her father, unfortunately, was a daimon. It was a necessary evil.” Evelyn pursed her lips briefly, and then gestured at the girl. “You have my vow that she is my offspring, and while you do not share my blood, Adam considers you his child, so Aya is your cousin.”

While Evelyn spoke, Aya was looking at the boy with an expression of fear that Mallory didn’t understand.

Mallory shook her head. “Daimons can’t breed with—”

“They can if the witch is strong enough and willing to do what she must for a greater cause,” Evelyn interrupted.

Aya stepped away from the boy, who seemed utterly calm about this very surreal conversation. She looked at Mallory. “Please don’t shoot me with the gun you’re clutching. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“The gun . . .”

“We can smell the metal,” the boy said.

“Witches? Adam never said—”

“
Daimons
, child. That”—Evelyn waved toward the boy—“is my daughter’s daimon. It can smell the metal of your gun.”

“Belias,” Aya said firmly. “
His
name is Belias.”

Silently, Mallory looked from Evelyn to Aya to Belias. The witch—her aunt, although the woman had never evinced the slightest familial affection—who was to help her father protect her was introducing her to a half-daimon and a daimon. The entire situation seemed suspect. She hadn’t been raised by a witch without learning how they thought. “Why are you really introducing us, Evelyn?”

The witch smiled approvingly. “Because I thought my daughter might be able to help you. She was raised as one of them in order to be deployed as my weapon when the time is right.”

The daimon who stood beside Evelyn tensed. “Do you have any idea what they would’ve done to her if they found out?”

Evelyn’s already cold gaze turned to Belias. “They butchered my parents, my baby brother, and almost every friend I had. They drained their energy and tossed them like refuse in the street.” She hissed a word in the witches’ language, and Belias was flung backward and slammed into a tree in the yard. “I know precisely what daimons can do to witches.”

Belias was already on his feet and advancing. He’d withdrawn several throwing knives from somewhere on him, and the first of them was in the air. “If you
knew
, you shouldn’t have abandoned her there.”

Evelyn didn’t even move, but Belias’ knife turned and flew back at him. He plucked it from the air, and in what appeared to be the same instant, sent two more knives hurtling toward Evelyn. With another word in the language that Mallory did not speak, Evelyn held Belias immobile as surely as if the air had become solid around him. While Evelyn cast her spell, one of the knives made contact with her, grazing her arm.

“Enough.” Aya stepped between the daimon and the witch.

Mallory couldn’t move. Knowing that witches were deadly was different from actually seeing it in person. Aside from that brief situation with Kaleb, Adam had never been anything like this in front of her—but Mallory had also never seen anyone move as quickly as Belias just had. The reality of a conflict between a witch and a daimon seemed somehow larger than she could fathom.