Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (29 page)

The engine shuddered, growling in time with the gravel beneath the wheels. He barely noticed, his gaze locked on the white farmhouse. A large autumn wreath had been added beside the wooden screen door since last he was there, and the oak tree in the front lawn now wore brilliant shades of red and gold, but otherwise, nothing had changed.

He felt like he was looking at the memory of a dream.

With a diminishing growl, the car pulled to a stop a dozen feet shy of the house, and with effort, Ashe shoved the gearshift into park.

“Stay–” she started, turning to Lily.

The little girl was already halfway out the door.

With a furious noise, Ashe spun and followed Lily from the car, and over the hood, he could hear her berating the girl while he and Spider climbed out.

The screen door swung open, and Ashe cut off, her gaze snapping toward the porch as though pulled by a string. An overloaded bag of vegetables in her arms, Sue backed awkwardly out the door and then turned.

She froze.

“Hannah?” she gasped. “Paul?”

He could feel the other girls’ caution, for all that the woman didn’t look like a Blood, and he saw Ashe glance to Spider swiftly, seeking confirmation.

“Ben!” Sue yelled over her shoulder. “It’s Paul and Hannah!”

Not waiting for her husband, she plopped the bag by the porch swing and then ran down the stairs, ignoring the vegetables as they toppled to the ground. Ashe started forward, making it a few steps before the woman reached Lily and fell to her knees to wrap the girl in a hug. Eyes widening, Ashe went rigid, and furtively, he motioned to her, trying to forestall any explosive intervention.

The girl glanced to him. Drawing a microscopic breath, she shifted her weight slightly, as though forcing herself not to strike out.

“We thought–” Sue started, and then she gave another gasp. “Oh, it doesn’t matter what we thought. I’m just so glad… so, so glad…”

She looked to him and her words trailed off, the relief on her face transforming into concern. Letting her grip on Lily relax, she began climbing to her feet, only to glance over her shoulder as the screen door opened again.

“Ben,” she said, and Cole could hear the gratitude in her voice. She turned back to Lily, and then paused as she suddenly seemed to notice the other two girls. A doubtful look flitted through her eyes, strengthening as she took in Spider’s appearance.

“You kids alright?” Ben called.

Cole nodded. “Yeah.”

“Who are your friends?” Sue asked.

He could hear the careful treatment she gave the description, despite her pleasant tone. Her hand closed around Lily’s shoulder, pulling the little girl a bit nearer to her side.

Ashe tensed all over again.

“Uh, right,” Cole said, watching Ashe as he wracked his brain for names. “Sue, Ben, this is, um…”

“Jane,” Spider cut in easily.

“Sarah,” Ashe managed after a moment’s hesitation.

“Nice to meet you,” Sue said, still eyeing them both. “I’m Sue Summers, and this is my husband, Ben.”

“Pleasure,” Spider replied respectfully.

Sue gave her a polite smile.

“So, um, we were out camping,” Cole offered into the brief silence, hurrying to prevent any more questions. “And we just got back to the, uh, Redmond’s…”

Sue’s guarded expression melted back into concern and she looked to Ben for help.

“What happened?” Cole asked.

Ben hesitated. “Maybe you kids should come inside, eh?”

“Are they dead?” he pushed.

“Paul.”

At the iron in the man’s voice, Cole paused and then looked away in frustration.

His gaze landed on Lily.

The tension leaked from him, leaving only a feeling of stupidity. No matter what’d happened, it probably hadn’t been pretty. And thus Lily didn’t need to hear about it. She already had enough nightmares.

“Okay,” he surrendered, motioning to Sue and Lily and then trailing them to the steps.

Gravel crunched immediately as Ashe followed.

The familiar smells of apple and cinnamon hit him as he came through the door, emanating from the homemade satchels hanging from the hooks on the entryway wall. Through the open space leading to the living room, more country crafts met his gaze, from the afghans Lily used to curl up under on cool nights to the handstitched pillows Sue favored so much. A bouquet of mums had taken the place of the summer flowers in the bay window at the front of the house, and a stack of wood waited by the fireplace, ready for the coming winter.

It all felt alien after the past few weeks.

“Oh!” Lily cried, coming to a stop. “Is that Butterscotch?”

He glanced over, spotting the potbellied tabby flopped behind the flower vase on the windowsill. At the sight of Lily, the animal rolled to her feet and then lumbered down from her post to bump her head against the girl’s leg.

“She’s gotten so huge!” Lily exclaimed, crouching to scratch the loudly purring cat.

“I think she missed you,” Sue answered with a smile.

The woman looked to Cole and he could see the request.

“Hey, Hannah?” he said. “Why don’t you take Butterscotch over to the couch before she hurts herself? We’ll just be in the kitchen.”

Lily glanced up, instantly reading between the lines. “I can–”

“Please?”

The little girl paused, her eyes flicking between him and Ashe. “Fine.”

Scooping up the purring creature, she headed for the sofa.

Sue gave Cole a grateful smile and then continued down the hall.

“You want me to stay?” he heard Spider ask Ashe quietly.

He looked back. As tense as ever, Ashe looked from the large window to Lily, and then glanced to the archway at the far end of the room that afforded a view of the brightly sunlit kitchen. “No,” she said tightly. “Thanks. I’ll just…”

She motioned to the opening haltingly and then headed after Sue.

Cole glanced to Spider, but the girl just lifted an eyebrow at him, waiting.

He followed Ashe. In the kitchen, the wizard girl leaned against the archway, her arms crossed and her gaze darting from the Summers to Lily and back. For their part, Sue and Ben were retrieving refreshments from the refrigerator, while awkwardly trying to pretend that having an edgy teenager watching their every move was remotely ordinary.

Fighting back a grimace, he sank onto a barstool by the island at the center of the room. Spider immediately took the seat next to him. Her gaze twitched across the windows above the kitchen sink and in the mudroom and, after she moved slightly to have a better sightline on both, she turned a look on him that made only the barest pretense of being a smile.

He shifted in his chair, fighting the urge to scoot farther from the girl, and forced his attention to the couple by the refrigerator. “So what happened?” he asked.

Sue paused in the middle of pulling out a bottle of orange juice and looked to her husband.

Reluctance flashed across Ben’s face. “Sheriff said he thought it was probably a break-in,” he said. “Just based on what they found and…”

He trailed off uncomfortably.

“What do you mean?” Ashe asked.

Ben glanced over at her. “That’s not really important.”

Cole could see the muscles in the girl’s jaw jump. “We need to know–”

“When?” Cole interrupted.

Ashe’s gaze darted to him, but she stayed silent.

“About two days ago,” Ben said.

Cole looked down, his brow furrowing as he processed the information and all it meant.

“Did they find any bodies?” Ashe asked.

He glanced up in time to see Sue’s eyebrows rise.

“Young lady, don’t you think you’re being a bit–”

“Sue,” he cut in.

The woman looked to him.

“They might not have been home.”

Sue hesitated, her indignation fading, but by her side, Ben just grimaced. “They did,” the man said.

Cole’s gaze found its way back to the tabletop. He shouldn’t be upset. It didn’t matter if they were dead or why. They hadn’t been good people. The world was better off with them gone.

The nausea eating his stomach didn’t quite see the value of his reasoning.

“Are they sure it was them?” he heard Ashe ask after a moment.

By the counter, Ben shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. I… I identified them.”

Cole looked up. “You were there?”

Ben’s jaw worked around. “Sue and I…” he glanced to his wife. “We were curious–”

“Worried,” the woman amended as she poured orange juice into a set of tall glasses.

Ben’s mouth tightened. “When we didn’t hear anything from you kids after that first phone call. We rang up there a couple times, but Geoffrey always answered. Just said you were having fun and not to worry.” Ben looked to his wife. “Didn’t seem quite right. So two days back, Wally and I – he’s one of the new guys I got working for me since you left – we headed up there on pretense of delivering some samples of Sue’s newest recipes and…” he grimaced. “We got there in time to see the fire engines heading out.”

He sighed. “Sheriff’s an old friend of her dad’s,” he said with a nod to Sue. “When he realized we’d been doing business with the Redmonds, he asked me to take a look. Make sure it was them.”

Ben paused. “I’m sorry, Paul.”

Cole looked away, and from the corner of his eye, he could see Ashe do the same.

“We’re just glad you kids weren’t there,” Sue said, putting a hand on his shoulder as she set the orange juice down beside him.

Taking the glass, he managed a nod, though the motion was only for show. Fact was, he and Lily wouldn’t have been there. And if they had, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Of course, then he and Lily would also be dead.

The Carnegeans hadn’t been good people. They’d deserved what happened to them. They’d been horrible, wretched excuses for human beings, and –

“The break-in,” he heard Ashe begin. “You said something about what they found.”

And he’d killed them.

He tensed. His father’s people had killed them. They’d murdered his grandparents, whom he didn’t even like.

But they’d done it because of him.

All because of him.

“That’s not–” Ben protested again.

“Ben,” Cole interrupted, his heart pounding. He looked up, meeting the older man’s eyes. “Tell me what they did.”

“I don’t think we need to go into that.”

“Ben.”

“It’s not important,” the man tried.

A chill moved through him, distant and strange. “Yes it is,” he said quietly.

For a moment, the man watched him, and slowly, his stubbornness drained. Carefully, he set down his glass. “The bodies…” he exhaled. “Paul, they showed signs they’d been tortured. Electrocuted and the like. Sheriff said the thieves probably wanted the safe combination, and then burned the building to try to cover the evidence.”

Cole swallowed.

“And you’re absolutely certain it was them?” Ashe asked, a hint of desperation in her tone.

“Their faces had been left untouched,” Ben told her reluctantly.

His lungs still seemed to be operating, though Cole couldn’t figure out why. He knew Brogan. Simeon too. Even tangentially, even just a bit. But enough to see what they’d done. The message they’d left, after getting all the information they needed. The Blood had known – they had to have known – that the Merlin would come looking for their historians. Now that Cole had gone after Lily, now that Ashe was still alive, they would have anticipated the queen learning the Carnegeans’ location.

And they’d made certain there’d be no doubt of the historians’ fates this time.

“Did you know the Redmonds too?” he heard Sue ask gently.

He glanced up. Her hands gripping the archway behind her, Ashe was staring at the floor, though her attention seemed far from the cream-colored tile. At the girl’s silence, Sue turned to her husband, and Cole could feel the concern aimed at him and Ashe alike.

Uncomfortably, he looked down, grasping after something to keep their questions at bay. “Do they have any suspects?”

“Not at the moment,” Ben admitted, “but they have a lot of people working on it. There were even some feds at the scene, helping the sheriff investigate.”

Cole’s head snapped up, and he saw Ashe’s do the same.

“Feds?” he repeated.

Ben nodded. “Three of them. I’m not sure what agency, though I’m guessing FBI.” He paused. “Maybe you could help them, though? Were there any odd folks hanging around, or…”

He trailed off hopefully.

Cole hesitated, and then shook his head. “No.”

Ben sighed.

“These feds,” Cole continued, his eyes twitching to Ashe. The girl’s gaze was locked on the bay window and its view of the road. “Did you tell them about us?”

Ben looked uncomfortable. Cole’s heart began to pound harder.

“I had to ask the sheriff, Paul. Just if he’d found… well, bodies. But I only said that I thought the Redmonds had some kids up there; nothing else. And I didn’t talk to the feds. Wally did, but he doesn’t know you all anyway, so…”

Cole returned his gaze to the table, trying to look reassured despite the fact breathing was really starting to become an issue. There was a chance Wally had overheard something. Knew something. There was a chance of a lot of things. And if they involved the Blood, anywhere near those chances was nowhere he wanted to be.

He hated to do it, didn’t even know how he was going to explain it, but the four of them had to get out of here. And now.

“So,” Sue said into the silence. “Where’d you go camping?”

He blinked, thrown by the sudden topic change. “Um…” he stalled, scrambling to remember a single campground within a thousand miles.

“Up near Glacier National Park,” Spider filled in. “My family has a cabin there.”

“How nice,” Sue replied.

Spider smiled.

“You girls are from the area then?” the woman continued.

Glancing to Ashe and Cole, Spider drew a breath. “I am,” she answered casually. “Sarah’s from back east. Met in college over at Oregon State. Roommates, you know? But as for how we ended up camping with Paul and Hannah…”

She gave Cole a smile.

He cleared his throat, trying to keep pace with the girl’s effortless lies. “I know Sarah’s family,” he said with an uncomfortable look to Ashe. “I just hadn’t seen her in a long time.”