Ties That Bind: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Spire Chronicles Book 2) (21 page)

My tears soaked through his sweater, and I let out another shuddery exhale. Marshall’s eyes filled my mind for a second before the brown turned to blue, the edges widening as they changed shape. Alex’s eyes. I gripped his cheek, pulling him close until our foreheads were pressed together. His pupils were wide to the point where his eyes were almost entirely black, but they were still his eyes.

I thought of Alice, about how her last thoughts were of her husband and son, how she was willing to sacrifice everything to see them again. I understood. Maybe not to the extent she did, but I could still relate. I clung to Alex so tightly my fingers cramped up. His face blurred as a new wave of tears flooded out. I collapsed against him, trembling violently.

Underneath the fear and pain, there was a pool of rage bubbling up inside me. The way that guy, Ken, behaved, the monster he became… I don’t know how they tortured him, any of them, but I knew it wasn’t enough.

“Are you okay?” I whimpered out. “You saw it, too. Did–”

“I can’t believe he did this,” Alex whispered. “He tried to back out a few times, but he always caved. I can’t believe–” He pursed his lips, burying his face into my hair.

I could believe it. I wasn’t sure what it said about how jaded I was that their depravity didn’t surprise me. Their
actions
surprised me, yes, but the depths to which they sunk as they continued their activities didn’t. Seeing the results of that depravity still fucked me up, which I was grateful for. It made me feel human. I rubbed the tears out of my eyes with one hand, pressing Alex’s head to my shoulder with the other. His grip around me tightened and we sat there, taking comfort in one another’s presence.

Once my tears dried up and I could, for the most part, breathe through my nose again, I pulled away from him. From this distance, the reddened veins of his eyes were startlingly clear, though I wasn’t about to hurt his manly feelings by pointing that out. I pushed some hair away from his face, giving him a shaky smile. His hands were clammy against mine, but he managed to return my smile with a halfhearted one of his own.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked.

“You’re always worried about me,” I said. “Even when you’re hurting.”

“Look who’s talking.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I’ll be fine.”

“I wouldn’t be,” I said. “I– I want to be there for you, the way you are for me. This is probably the worst time ever to have this discussion–” I pursed my lips, hoping the room was dark enough to cover my burning cheeks. “It just feels like it’s been all about my issues. I mean, I know we haven’t known each other that long, but–” God, this was way too embarrassing, especially since I realized there was no way Catherine and Tamlin had missed a word I said.

Alex’s smile was more genuine this time. “What happened to keeping things–”

I clamped a hand over his mouth and shushed him. “There is a child here.”

“Hey,” Tamlin cried, frowning from his position near Catherine. “I am not a child.”

Catherine chuckled weakly as she leaned against him. “I think you just proved her point, my dear.”

“I was going to say ‘casual.’” Alex stood up, pulling me to him.

I looked into his eyes, forcing myself to memorize every detail. “Maybe you changed my mind.”

“Maybe,” he repeated.

“If you two are finished…” Catherine trailed off. Her knowing smile was back in place, the exhaustion she’d displayed a few seconds ago all but gone. “Was that enough proof for you?”

“How many?” I asked. “Sullivan said there have been at least a dozen.”

“Alice was the fifteenth,” she said. “Those hunters spoke of a ‘boss,’ do you know who that could be?” I guess that’s why they were interrogating them.

Alex nodded. “We think it’s Wright, Sullivan’s right-hand man.”

“Wright the right,” Tamlin said with a boyish grin. “I love that name. Title. Whatever.”

“Sullivan will not – cannot – act without proof,” said Catherine.

“When we first arrived,” said Alex, “Sir Wallace mentioned he had a friend giving him information. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“It is.” She nodded toward the stairs. We made our way up in single file as she continued speaking. “However, my word alone won’t do anything. When I first experienced these visions, I noticed the dagger and ropes were magic – dark magic. Now, someone like me cannot be seen walking around the city trying to trace the source. But a mage invited by Sullivan… I’m told magic users in the Order tend to stick with their own kind?”

“All beings in the world prefer staying with their own kind,” I said. “Usually, at least. But yeah, Order mages prefer to sign up for postings that require specialized task forces.”

She led us to a sitting room. I sunk into a sofa I swore was the best thing I’d ever experienced, letting out a happy sigh as Alex wrapped his arm around my shoulder.

“It is fortunate, then,” said Catherine, “that Sullivan has a personal connection to an independent magic user. Inviting you would be much less suspicious. In a perfect world, he would have invited you as a guest, but he didn’t believe you’d accept anything less than a direct summon, which he can’t issue without a reason.”

Sullivan knew me better than I thought. “You managed to capture all those hunters without me,” I said, smothering a violent yawn against Alex’s shoulder. Apparently, two short naps after burning out all my magic wasn’t enough to put me back in top shape. Go figure.

“Not their boss,” she said. “I wish I could say it was a surprise to hear Wright is behind this, but it isn’t; his disdain for our kind is well known.”

“We should tell Sir Wallace,” Alex said. “See what he can do.”

Tamlin looked between us, eyes lingering on my frown. “Morgan doesn’t agree.”

Alex turned to me, but I avoided his eyes in favor of speaking to the floor. “I don’t. If Sullivan was capable of doing something, he would have done it already. We need to find proof before he can act; the Council won’t tolerate vigilante justice. Not from its hunters.”

“What proof?” he asked.

“The dagger,” said Catherine. “Bindings, too. Neither were found with the hunters, and one of them admitted Ken would pass the items off to Wright when they were done. None of them knew what he did with them, though.”

“Wait,” said Alex. “You knew it was Wright? Then, why ask us?”

“To see if you knew or if we needed to tell you,” said Tamlin. “Duh. I mean, c’mon, the dude’s name makes him sound like he should be a Batman villain.”

“I like you,” I said.

He winked at me. “Right back at you.”

“Tamlin,” Catherine chastised.

“What?” he said with an adorable pout. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Catherine chuckled, shaking her head. “Anyway, what we know doesn’t matter as much as how we can prove it.”

“Think Wright’s dumb enough to leave that stuff in his house?” Tamlin asked.

“I think he’s too paranoid to store those things anywhere else,” I said. “I know I would be. But…”

“But?” said Alex.

I shrugged. “I don’t know how well I’d be able to sleep with those things in the house. They’re pretty, well, evil. There was literally a dark cloud around the dagger.”

He raised a brow. “I did not see a cloud.”

“In these situations, you see what the spirit saw and felt, but any further observations you yield are by your own abilities. Morgan’s magical ability allows her to see things normal people cannot.” Catherine whispered something to Tamlin, and he left the room.

“Mister I See Dead People is not normal,” I said.

Alex narrowed his eyes at me, but I detected no malice. “We need to find those weapons and take them out of circulation. There is a reason we hand that stuff over to the Council.”

Alex turned to Catherine. “You’re a witch–”

“Shaman.”

He nodded. “What did you observe?”

“Whoever or whatever made those is very powerful. They’ve also likely allied themselves with a great evil,” she said, a shadow crossing over her face. If this was able to prompt such a somber expression from her, I didn’t doubt how grave it was. “Those hunters did an abominable thing of their own volition, but as you saw, the man who wielded the knife seemed to grow more and more depraved.”

“You think he was influenced by the knife?” said Alex.

“Dude, evil black cloud of magical evil,” I said.

Tamlin came back with tea and some quiet mumblings about why they couldn’t invest in some tea bags because he sucked at making tea the old fashioned way. I think he did alright. The tea was bitter, but it was nothing a little sugar wouldn’t fix. My nose wrinkled as I took another sip. Okay, a lot of sugar.

“The more powerful an item, the more likely it is to have horrible side effects, regardless of the intentions with which it was made,” said Catherine. She brought the tea cup up to her lips and frowned. “Tamlin.”

“Yes?” he asked reluctantly.

“You used five handfuls didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” His pale brows knitted together. “It’s the number of people plus one–”

“Minus, dear. Minus one.”

Tamlin pursed his lips, reaching over to slide the sugar over to his mother. “Plus one sugar, then.”

“Are there more of you?” I asked. “I’d like it if there were more of you.”

“One of him is more than enough, I assure you,” Catherine said, reaching for the sugar. It ended up being plus three sugars, which is why I hated math.

“Getting back to the topic at hand,” said Alex, “Wright spends most of his time working with Sir Wallace, so we need to find a time when he’s gone to search his home.”

“If he’s keeping that stuff in his house, he’ll have guards,” I said, noting Alex hadn’t put any sugar in his tea. I don’t know how I’d react if he asked for cream.

“Maybe it’ll be a creepy mansion filled with booby traps,” said Tamlin. “You could always lure him here for us to interrogate.”

“You mean torture,” said Alex.

“What happened to my friends was torture,” Tamlin said, all traces of humor fading from his face. He looked like an adult, albeit a young one, for the first time all night. “What will happen to him is justice.”

“Sullivan will not allow such a thing,” said Catherine. “It will be difficult enough to mollify him about what happened to the other hunters, even if they were guilty.”

“You want me to talk to him?” Tamlin asked. All maturity left his features as an excited gleam shone in his eyes. He seemed more than happy for a chance to speak with Sullivan, even if meant getting yelled at.

“That is not a conversation you can handle,” she said. “Besides, he’d still be mad at me for keeping it from him.”

Warning bells went off in my head and I glanced at Alex, who gave me a confused look of his own. “How do you know Sullivan again?”

“The tribal leaders and their shamans meet with him twice a year to discuss things,” she said. “We met there.”

“That is both informative and vague,” I told her.

“They don’t let you be shaman until you master that,” said Tamlin.

An amused smile tugged at Catherine’s already quirked lips. “If you want to know more, then perhaps you should ask him.”

“Yeah,” I said, “we don’t really have that kind of relationship. Y’know, where we actually speak to each other.”

“I’m told your friend wasn’t very forthcoming during his time with us,” Catherine said, turning to Alex. The sudden veer from the topic of my father only made me more suspicious. “Perhaps you can get more information from him.”

“Your torture didn’t work, so you want me to try,” he said.

Tamlin had a look on his face that said, “Dude, this again?” and I felt guilty for agreeing with him. Not that guilty, though, considering what Tom had been party to. After experiencing what the victims went through, I couldn’t help but feel personally invested in this. I was surprised Alex didn’t feel the same. His connection to Tom must’ve been stronger than I thought. I guess I’d still have a huge soft spot for my best friend, even if I found out they’d been doing fucked up shit like this. I’d want to get their side of the story, to understand what made them do this.

I squeezed his hand. “Alex, please.”

“I can’t believe you’re okay with this.” The disappointment on his face made me feel worse than any look Rowan had ever given me.

“They captured you, too. You weren’t in those visions, but they still kept you strung up. Tom told me what they did to him. They could’ve done the same to you.”

“We wouldn’t–” Tamlin stood up, but his mother pulled him back down with a shake of her head.

“I won’t do it,” said Alex. “What Tom did was horrible, but it doesn’t excuse your actions. We already have a lead with Wright’s house, we don’t need to speak with him. And if we do, we’ll get the answers on our own.”

“Like you tried at the prison?” I said. “Because that wasn’t exactly friendly, either.” It was the wrong thing to say, but I was exhausted after that 3D séance, and my mouth was hard enough to control at the best of times.

“That was different.”

“How?”

“I was looking for Tom,” he exclaimed, ripping his hand away and standing up. “He’d been captured, Morgan.”

“And they were looking for the man behind the torture and murder of their friends and family.” My temper flared at his stubbornness but I tried to keep my voice calm. “How are we different? Have you already forgotten what the spirits showed you? We just
lived
through that agony, Alex, except we’re a million times luckier because we’re still alive.”

Unable to keep my anger in check, I shook my head and made my way out of Catherine’s home before I said something I would regret. It was as if all the sentiment we shared in the basement was gone. Fuck relationships, they were way too complicated. I never had this problem when I was sleeping with Ipos. That had been a great time. We joked, chatted, had great sex, and never had an argument that lasted longer than it took to reach a bed – or any other solid surface where we weren’t likely to be disturbed. This, though? With all the feelings and the disagreements and being a mature adult in a committed relationship? It was all way too hard; I didn’t know if it was worth the pain. I let out a frustrated groan. Fuck. This.