Chapter 12

...

Leech was sitting at the kitchen table talking to a woman I couldn't see when I walked in. Bryce was still on the phone. Leech told me, "Savannah wants to talk to you."

Rolling my eyes, I cast the communication spell. Instead of the tirade I expected, there was a moment of silence. Then: "I should have told him not to talk about your sister. I'm sorry."

"It's fine." I wished she hadn't heard my little outburst, but it was too late to change that. "You're not mad I slept with him, are you?"

"I don't care what he does. That includes whatever you want to do to him." The understanding tone could only last so long. "What could possibly possess you? He's evil, remember? And not just baby-evil like you usually deal with."

My ex-boyfriends were not baby-evil. That was giving them too much credit. They were losers, not evil. Bryce wasn't either—he was just a jerk. "He's...I don't know. It was fun. I didn't actually give it much thought."

"How terribly irresponsible." Savannah finally started laughing. "Do you ever?"

"Do you?"

"Touché."

Bryce interrupted our conversation. "Something came up and Sean couldn't come until the afternoon, so I told him to talk to the police without bringing you into it. We'll still go this afternoon as planned. We just have the morning to ourselves now."

I broke eye contact and pretended to be fascinated with the countertop. I had to admit, it sounded fun. As long as he kept his mouth shut. Leech was scooping up a spoonful of cheerio-rice-krespie-fruit loop-y goodness and carefully not looking at either of us. I glanced up again to find blue eyes still on me.

I jerked my eyes away when the voice came through my head. "You haven't checked my grimoires yet," Savannah practically shouted. "You could do that. Get Leech to take you to the L.A. house. They might have something useful."

I repeated her idea aloud with a slight modification. "I need a ride to Savannah's house. Are either of you free?"

"I'm not driving you to Portland," Bryce said. "We have time but not that much time."

"She sort of has a place in town," I said, not really wanting to explain it further. "It shouldn't take long, especially the way you drive."

"Gillian?" Savannah was blaring in my head. "The plan was to go with Leech."

As Bryce went to tell Grant and Paulson to follow him to the address I quickly supplied, I told Savannah, "I don't see what's wrong with this plan."

"I won't tell you where they are," she threatened.

"Under the mattress. And in the ceiling of the closet."

"Fuck you." Savannah started laughing. "How the hell do you know that?"

"You told me on your birthday. Remember? Maybe you don't, you were a little smashed—whatever. I do listen when you talk."

"Really?"

"Sometimes," I shrugged. I stood up, snatching my cell from the table. I had been there barely three days and already I was taking over Leech's house. Bryce got up as well, picking up the car keys and telling Leech to tell Sean to call him on his cell.

She sighed. "Gillian, even if we ignore your completely fucked up dating history, screwing the evil half-brother is not going to end well. You do know that, right? And I can't kick his ass for hurting you when I'm incorporeal."

"You worry too much," I said, before I said goodbye to Leech. It was pretty sweet of her to pretend she cared. "Thanks for trying."

"I don't know why I bother."

Neither did I.

...

We did get to our destination ridiculously fast. More impressive than the fact that we got there alive was the fact we didn't even get stopped. Cabal influence? Supernatural power? Sheer dumb luck? I didn't ask, just asked that he take the corners at less than sixty miles an hour and ignored him when he insisted it was perfectly safe.

"I still don't understand how my sister has a place in town," he said, climbing out of the car, looking at the rows of houses in the pretty little development with distaste. "How could she afford a place like this?"

The white house with the bright green door was a little quaint, especially for Savannah. What were the odds that Bryce was going to flip out when I told him? I had no idea, but what was the worst he could do? He might leave me behind, but I could see Grant convincing him to pick me up fairly quickly.

Grant and Paulson stayed in the car, prepared to stand watch. It was still too weird thinking that Paulson was listening to everything we said, but I pushed that thought out of my head. Because it was really too creepy to contemplate.

"It's from her secret lover who is magnificently rich," I told Bryce. After I had taken down the wards and cast the highest unlocking spells that existed, I glanced over to see if he believed me. He didn't. Opening the door, I added, "Or Sean's paying for it. Because he feels horribly guilty about the crap your family throws at her."

"He bought her a house?"

"So she has a place to stay when she visits him." I pointedly ran my hand over one of the pictures, coming away with a layer of dust. "She only uses it sometimes. It's more symbolic than anything."

"Sean's always been an idiot," Bryce said. "It's nice enough, I guess."

It was gorgeous. Savannah really did have an eye for color. With Sean's money, she had fixed the place up so it was completely unique. Maybe some of the pictures were a little more morbid than I would have liked, but since I didn't have to live there, I just found them slightly amusing.

It wasn't a big house—Sean wasn't that generous. The kitchen and the living room were practically on top of each other. But it did feel like a home, even with the smell of dust in the air. It was the sort of place where you could see people sitting around together, eating and laughing with each other. Like those families you saw on TV and stuff. A home, with pictures on top of the mantle and magazines on the couch and even fake plants in the window.

"Is that you?" Bryce asked picking up one of the pictures. I cringed, knowing exactly which one it was. "How old are you there?"

"Fourteen."

"So you've grown a whole two inches since then?"

"Shut up, Bryce," I said, trying to grab the picture of the Sabrina School out of his hand. He just held it up out of reach and I couldn't exactly jump for it without completely humiliating myself.

"Why all the girls?" He quirked an eyebrow. "And Lucas Cortez?"

I hit him. Perv. "It's the Sabrina School reunion. It was Paige's wedding gift from Lucas. A get together for all of us." He looked at me like I had switched to Greek. "It's...Paige tutors, sort of, a bunch of young witches, mostly online. It was the first time we met face to face." Remembering the meeting, I smiled. "I punched Savannah in the face."

Bryce laughed. "Why?"

"I don't remember," I said honestly. "I'm a whole lot weaker and I think she made fun of me a little too often...or something. But after we finished clawing at each other, we were inseparable the rest of the trip. She said I hit okay considering I was three feet tall. She called me Gidget the whole time. But I called her Big Foot, so it was okay."

Bryce shook his head, then put down the picture. The others were mostly of Paige and Lucas and Adam, one with the werewolves, another with me, and then one with Sean. Bryce started at that one a little longer. "They don't look anything a like."

"They have the same eyes," I said. It was the first thing you noticed about either of them. "You don't even have that in common with her."

Bryce didn't answer, his attention focused on the corner behind me. "She has a Gibson LSG double-neck?"

He was already lovingly stroking the guitar, a look of pure adoration on his face. He reverently lifted it up and sat down in one of the armchairs. A second later he was carefully strumming.

"She bought it for her boyfriend—who she then dumped on Valentine's day." And she said I had problems with guys. "She doesn't actually play."

"Obviously. It's horribly out of tune." It wouldn't be once he got through with it. He was already plucking strings, listening, turning screws. "Do you know how expensive these are? Why the hell would she buy it and then just let it sit here? That should be a crime."

"It's just her way," I shrugged. "Anyway, I'm sure you have one."

Bryce looked up, almost sheepish. "I have three. Dad got one signed by both Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts."

"Not the other two?"

"That goes without saying." He must have realized just how hard I was rolling my eyes. "You're supposed to get something big for your eighteenth. Plus, Dad just wanted an excuse to talk to the Stones."

"Talk to the Stones," I muttered. Like it was easy. "When you're finished making love to Savannah's guitar, could you come upstairs? I need you to get the grimoires."

Because I couldn't reach the ceiling like Savannah could, even with a stool. Bryce didn't have to know that. He put the guitar down reluctantly, making sure it was secure in its stand before following me up the stairs, occasionally making fun of Savannah's hair in whatever picture caught his eye. He didn't say anything about the art though, just stared at a little bit. If this was incredibly weird for him, I didn't ask.

When we entered her bedroom, he did say, "Fucking awesome."

Savannah had outdone herself. She had attacked the walls with paint, where the weird and morbid met color and whimsy all with actual talent. My favourite part of her room was the ceiling—a black and white spiral that made my dizzy just looking at it. I don't know how she managed to sleep in the room. It was that distracting.

A quick survey of the strangely decorated room led me to the corner by her closet. A plaster statue sat on top of a low stool. The piece was light and I quickly pulled it off, handing the stool to Bryce.

Pointing out the closet, I said, "One of the panels in the ceiling lifts up. The grimoires should be there."

Bryce nodded and disappeared inside while I began lifting the mattress up. It was difficult to pull out the grimoires while holding up the heavy mattress, but I managed. The two grimoires I removed didn't look very promising, but I also got my hands on Savannah's spell journal, which would be interesting to read even if it wasn't particularly helpful.

"Bryce? How soon do we have to get back to Leech's?"

"We have until four. You want to go get lunch?"

"Not really what I was thinking about."

He came out of the closet, carrying the stool, to find me lying on the bed. My legs were crossed, my fingers slowly working on undoing the buttons of my shirt, my shoes already off and then Bryce put down the stool and climbed right over me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him down to me. As we kissed, he somehow got his hand on my shirt and managed to undo the rest of the buttons. It was only as we tried to pull off the unnecessary clothing that I remembered:

"Paulson."

"Close enough," he murmured.

I laughed and clarified: "Could you just...tell him to move? Please? It would make me feel a lot better."

"He's not going to use his powers."

"He says he's not going to use his powers. You don't know for sure."

"This is one of those irrational things that you just aren't going to let go, isn't it?" Bryce asked with a sigh. I could only nod.

"Fine."

He rolled off me and pulled out his phone. I held my shirt closed and moved to the window where he eventually came up behind me. An arm wrapped around my waist and I leaned back into Bryce as he talked to the men in the car, ordering them to take a drive out of Paulson's range. "Good?" he asked as the car disappeared around the corner.

"I could be better," I admitted. Turning around, I threw my arms around his neck and he easily caught me as I jumped up. It wasn't very gentle, but it was fun, and I shivered in the air as his hands held my bare legs. I was sucking on his lower lip when he moved too far to the right, knocking into the bed causing us to come crashing down.

Bryce swore as I landed on top of him, but I couldn't stop giggling, even as I went to kiss him again. As I went to shrug off my shirt, I realized, "We can't on her bed. She really will never speak to me again."

"She's only my half-sister," Bryce said. I hit him on the back of the head and he sighed. "Fine."

He picked me up, even as he kissed me again. "The books," I reminded him, scrambling out of his arms.

"Tease," he said, pulling me to him.

Only he didn't kiss me like I had expected him too. Instead, his eyes stayed above me. Bryce even pushed past me, eyes on the window. Annoyed, I followed him over to see what had ruined the mood so completely. Once I had looked out, I stopped thinking Bryce was overreacting.

Nothing good had ever come out of seventeenth century soldiers walking down the street.

"They might not be coming here," I said weakly.

"Yeah and I want Savannah sainted," Bryce snapped. "I'm calling Grant and Paulson. We're getting out of here. Now."

I hurried to the closet and grabbed a bright pink backpack that was clearly Savannah trying to make a statement. Shoving the grimoires inside, I watched as Bryce grew more and more upset with his phone. "It's busy. It's not allowed to be busy."

It didn't matter if that was just his Cabal arrogance or the actual company rules. As I frantically pulled on my shoes, I told him, "They can take care of themselves. I'm more worried about us."

Bryce quickly demanded: "Is there a way to sneak out of here?"

I almost laughed as I rushed down the stairs, buttoning my shirt as I went. "This is Savannah we're talking about. Of course there's ways to sneak out of here. How much time do we have?"

The door burst opened, revealing a man dressed in a vaguely familiar grey uniform. It took me a second to place it—Confederate grey. I screamed, mostly because of the shock. Bryce was a little more efficient, casting a knockback spell. Sense returned to me and I quickly slammed the door shut with a fast breeze, followed by a whole lot of locking spells.

"Did he have a musket?" I demanded.

"Later. How long will that hold?"

"It'll hold unless they counter-cast," I promised. No sooner had the words left my mouth than the sound of breaking glass tore through the house. "Not the windows—she's going to kill me."

"If we survive," Bryce pointed out. When he gestured for me to get on with it, I realized I should maybe point the way out of there.

We hurried through the kitchen and I unlocked the backdoor. It led out to a smallish porch, which had about thirty steps leading down into a ravine. It was breathtaking on a good day—today it was merely convenient. Not even ancient gun-wielding maniacs could see through trees. I hoped.

"I can't believe Sean," Bryce said as we ran down the porch steps. "This place is gorgeous."

"Heaven forbid he do something nice with all his blood money," I shot back.

Bryce snorted as we reached the bottom of the stairs. Maybe while running for our lives wasn't the time to be bantering, but at least this way we could pretend we were going to be fine. There was a path just a little ways in, but I stopped just behind the first large clump of trees. I was hoping they would stop pursuit when they realized that there was no one home. Bryce was quietly cursing as the branches continually whacked him.

But he was still on his phone. "Grant always answers," he said, half in shock. "Do you think...?"

"I'm sure they're fine."

Then we both fell silent. On the porch a man in a grey uniform appeared, two others flanking him. It was an old uniform, there was no doubt about that. The weapons they were holding were muskets, bayonets still attached. I couldn't believe it. It looked like something out of a Mel Gibson movie. Except real.

"Grant wouldn't leave me," Bryce hissed beside me. Was he trying to persuade me or himself? "Fuck. I think they're spreading out."

"We should move."

Bryce didn't come when I tugged on his arm. Instead, he began to mutter under his breath. It was a spell I didn't recognize and I looked around, trying to see what he was attempting to do. The spell sounded vaguely familiar, the translation for the Hebrew words coming easily to me.

Power? Crush? That sounded ominous.

A shot rang out through the air. I looked around, peering through the leaves to find out the source. It happened again, and again and finally I realized that it wasn't a shot. The thundering noise wasn't from a gun.

Bryce was trying to bring the house down.

The window frames were cracking. Part of the paneling began to splinter. The roof was trembling slightly and shingles slowly began to fall. A window shattered somewhere in the front and the sounds of hundreds of tiny objects falling to the ground reached us. The men scrambled around, trying to identify the source. A few more streamed out of the house.

"Stop it," I cried.

Bryce looked terrible. He was paler than normal and shaking a little. There was no point in killing himself for a mere distraction, because he wasn't going to be able to bring it down fast enough. Plus, Savannah would kill me if I let him destroy the house. I grabbed his wrist and he snapped out of it.

There was a whizzing sound and I glared at Bryce, trying to make him stop. But he wasn't casting anymore. Instead, he blinked and then jerked us deeper into the woods.

"Gunshots," he hissed. I think Bryce was losing it. "No one shoots at a member of the Nast board of directors. No one."

"They do now."

At least my mouth was working. This wasn't possible. First knights and now soldiers from the Civil War? My life sucked.

Bryce dragged me behind some trees further in and asked quickly, "How do we get out?"

"There's a drain about three houses over just a little further down at the bottom a ravine. It leads into the sewer and you can double back from there," I explained. "It's hard to see, if you don't know what to look for, there's a rock covering the entrance." A horrible thought struck me. "You might be too big to fit." Savannah was almost the same height, but she was thinner and—

"Then we'll move the damn thing," Bryce snarled. "Alright, we need a distraction. I might be a little tired right now, so anything you can do would be good."

"Just use a distortion spell and hope they don't look too closely," I snapped back. "Now come on. We have to move."

I didn't wait another second. I quickly cast the spell and began to creep along the forest floor, pulling Bryce along behind me. More and more men began spilling out of the house. As they crept closer there was the temptation to just cast a binding spell and try and take them out. But there was too many of them and even with Savannah's spellcasting power, I wasn't her. I could not take on the armies of hell and emerge unscathed.

I paused almost inside a large tree, pressed up against Bryce and cast a quick cover spell. As long as we didn't move, we would be invisible. We were pretty close but there were a lot more men coming out. There was about twenty of them and I wasn't sure if a distortion spell would allow us to slip past all of them.

Fortunately, it didn't look like we were going to need that. The men in grey head down towards the other side of the ravine. I let out a sigh of relief and dragged Bryce towards our means of escape.

"See, things can be done without violence," I muttered.

"Do it the boring way," he complained as I pulled him along the path. It was less muddy even if it was narrow and there was a wicked drop beside us. We just had to move fast enough so no one would see if they happened to turn around.

"Must you always—"

The sound Don't Cha erupted, broadcasting for miles in the quiet forest. Bryce stared at me in horror as I tried to shut off me cell phone before anyone heard. I took too long.

The men who had been curiously running the other way, turned and spotted us standing openly on the path. Muskets were raised. That was all it took to have us hightailing it out of there.

Bryce dragged me closer to the ravine floor but then he tripping, knocking his weight onto me. It wasn't advisable, considering he was more than twice my size. The full force of his weight landed on me and the foot I put out for balance landed on a patch of fresh mud, causing me to topple to the ground. He was right there with me. The force of his fall propelled us both down the hill, one over the other, as shots rang out around us.

We finally came to rest near the bottom of the ravine, much closer to our goal. I could actually see the rock that signalled the sewer opening nearby. Finally, some good luck. I lay sprawled on top of Bryce for an instant, trying to catch my breath and make sure nothing was broken. Calm had returned to me. I would kill whoever had called later, when I survived.

"Fuck," he murmured.

I glanced down and noticed he was even paler than before. I wasn't that heavy. I put my arm on one side of his head to propel myself off and then noticed it was covered in blood. For a second I thought I had been hit and hadn't noticed; I looked down and realized it was coming from Bryce.

...