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“Is he okay?” he softly asked.

  “He’s healing.” The three men might be nearly identical triplets, but their personalities couldn’t be more different. “You know, I keep looking for an adultier adult to talk to about all this shit, and it scares the crap out of me that somehow, somewhere, I became the adult.”

  He snorted. “An adultier adult?”

  “Baba Yaga can’t give us answers. Ryan can’t give us answers. Obviously, Lacey can’t give us answers. I’m head of the Triad. I feel like I’m pretty dang worthless at this point. I really do. I hate to feel like that, but I do.”

  “You’re not worthless, babe. It’s just a sticking point. You three will figure it out.”

  “But what if we don’t?” she whispered. “All those people will die.”

  He held her a little tighter. “So far, your track record for solving problems has been one-hundred-percent.”

  “Except for Brighton.”

  He hesitated. “In some ways, maybe this is best. He died to save our kids. He’ll come back well-loved and not burdened with whatever was going on with him.”

  She let Cail lead her back to the living room. She didn’t have a response for him because in all honesty, she knew anything she said would be utter bullshit in regards to Brighton’s death.

  The truth lived in her.

  It was a truth she couldn’t let her men know.

  That she willingly sacrificed their brother to occlude Colleen, the daughter of the man who’d killed their parents?

  Uh, no.

  Not just no, but hell to the fucking no.

  * * * *

  The mint tea and toast helped settle Elain’s stomach the rest of the way, and she started sipping ginger ale. She was due in to Dr. Alberto’s office in Tampa next week for a check-up. While she felt in her heart there wouldn’t be anything wrong with her babies, that anxiety still wanted to creep in.

  She couldn’t help it.

  Mai and Lina both showed up about an hour after Brodey finally headed out to the barns to help Ain, leaving Cail behind with Elain. Good timing, too, because an early Florida thunderstorm unleashed, the bottom falling out.

  Lina stood at the back sliders and stared out at the rain. “Maybe we need some skyclad dancing.”

  “You realize there’s lightning out there, right?” Cail asked. “I don’t think that’s safe.”

  Lina turned and motioned both hands at Mai. “There’s lightning right here, bubba. Bottled up inside her coyote self.”

  “Actually,” Elain said, staring out at the rain, “I want to go out there.”

  “What?” Cail and Mai both asked.

  “Doesn’t lightning stir up ozone and stuff? Energy in the atmosphere?” She started stripping, pulling her shirt off over her head. “Cail, you okay watching the babies?”

  “Sure, but babe—”

  “Please grab us some towels. We’ll need them when we come back.”

  “Um, Elain?” Lina said. “I was only sort of kidding.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not.” Elain didn’t pull her gaze from where the rain was pockmarking the surface of their swimming pool, almost making it look like rough concrete. She stripped off her shorts and underwear and dropped them onto her shirt. “You coming?” All she wore was her wedding rings, the chain with the pawprint tag that matched the ones her men wore, and the citrine amulet Ryan had given her.

  She opened the sliders and stepped out, sliding them shut behind her.

  Lina and Mai joined her a moment later, following her through the rain as Elain walked into the open expanse of the backyard.

  Somewhere close by, thunder rumbled.

  “Um, honey?” Lina asked, raising her voice over the storm. “You sure this is okay?”

  Elain glanced at her. “You got a better idea?”

  “Not really, but we don’t know if we’re lightning-proof.”

  “Guess we’re going to find out.” She continued walking for another couple of minutes, out into a small field just to the side of their house where trees would block the view of any of the ranch hands.

  Not that Elain expected any of them to be out and about on this part of the ranch, especially in this weather.

  Elain stopped and held her hands out to Lina and Mai, who joined hands with her and each other. Throwing her head back and closing her eyes against the stinging rain, she started chanting in an old language that rhymed the way she said it.

  She knew due to the connection she now had with Lina and Mai that they could understand every word.

  “Goddess above, Goddess below,

  Rain falls down and wind does blow.

  Clear our minds and clear our hearts,

  Show to us the hidden arts.

  Show to us behind the veil

  The dark, the light, the thin, the pale.

  Reveal the sights that we do seek

  And allow us to protect the weak.

  Goddess we come before thee

  And as I spake it, SO MOTE IT BE!”

  Thunder rumbled, another crack hitting close by and making all three women jump, but they didn’t break the circle.

  They stood there for a long moment. Elain felt hints of the wasabi-in-her-veins sensation she sometimes got when they started working magick, but no answers were forthcoming.

  They also couldn’t drop into the vision, either.

  “Well, shit.” Lina had worn her red hair down today, and she shoved the wet mess off her face. “Now what?”

  “I don’t know,” Elain said.

  “Fuck!” Mai screamed, throwing her hands in the air.

  A blue bolt of lightning shot out from her hands and hit a cabbage palm about thirty feet from them. It exploded into flame, making the three women grab onto each other and scream in fright.

  “Holy fuck!” Lina said. “What the hell’d you do that for? More importantly, how’d the hell you do that?”

  “I…I don’t know!” Mai burst into tears. “I was just frustrated!”

  “Well, stop crying, and try to remember how you did that. That was great! I mean, a little overkill to get swamp cabbage, but that was awesome!”

  Elain started laughing. It first bubbled out of her in little snorts and gasps until she was finally forced to collapse to the ground in laughter, feeling damned good to have something to laugh about, finally.

  The tree steamed in the rain, the deluge putting the flames out, leaving a charbroiled and smoking husk behind.

  Lina started laughing, too, as did Mai.

  And as the sky poured, they sat there, leaning on each other and laughing their asses off as the rain put out the fire.

  Chapter Ten

  After finally returning to Elain’s house, taking a quick dip in the pool to wash away the mud that the rain hadn’t, drying off, and getting dressed, the women sat and tried again to get into the vision.

  Before they did, they told Cail about the fiery demise of the cabbage palm, knowing it was only going to get back to him and the others eventually anyway.

  After an hour of trying…nothing. Plus another wave of exhaustion rolled over Elain, and she begged off further work. Zack was going to go get the three spell books from the bank vault and bring them to Elain once it stopped raining. In fact, she’d fallen asleep on the couch, awakened when Zack arrived with the books later that afternoon.

  She walked with him into the kitchen.

  “You want me to get Lina and Mai over here?”

  She shook her head. “No. Let me try this.”

  “You sure you want to do this alone?”

  “I have a feeling there are some things I’ll have to do alone,” she said. “Better I get used to it now.”

  He laid the three books out on the towels they kept them wrapped in. Lina and Mai hadn’t reacted individually to the books as strongly as Elain did.

  She took the third one, her fingers plucking the towel and dragging it toward her.

  This wasn’t something she looked forward to if her reactions the last time
she’d touched them were any indication.

  Taking a deep breath, and putting up a powerful mental barrier, Elain barely touched her fingers to the cover of the book. She now knew, from her previous handling of them, that it wasn’t leather. It was the skin of a virgin female dragon shifter who’d been killed, her flesh tanned for the covers, her blood mixed in with the ink.

  Forcing all of that to remain outside her brain, Elain tried to feel for any hint of Brighton’s history with the damned artifact.

  And she found…nothing.

  Dammit.

  Oh, she found lots of little snippets of things, but only recently, from the last few decades.

  Nothing going back as far as when he’d obtained the book.

  She doubted what Ryan had done to occlude Brighton’s ownership of it was interfering with her abilities.

  Finally, after about ten minutes, she gave up and shook her head.

  Zack, who didn’t have an averse reaction to the books, dragged the towel toward him so she wouldn’t have to touch the book again. “Want to try the others?”

  She let out a sigh. “Why not? Might as well.”

  But twenty minutes later, she still didn’t have any answers.

  “I’m sorry I asked you to go all the way into town to get them.”

  “Hey, no, it’s okay. Look, this is my job. To try to be support for you three.”

  Once he left, Elain knew another stop she needed to make. Cail was stretched out on the couch and reading. Connor and Ellie were both asleep, under Jasper’s watchful eye.

  “I need to run a quick errand,” she said.

  Cail glanced up at her. “To town?”

  She shook her head.

  He sighed and sat up, coaxing her over for a kiss. “Take your phone, please.”

  “Will do.” She already had it tucked into her pocket. “I’m going to take him, too.” She pointed to Jasper, who’d been watching.

  Jasper raised his head and stared at her, a quizzical expression on his face.

  Cail let out a little noise Elain couldn’t completely interpret. “Can I ask you a question, babe?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the deal with him?”

  Elain didn’t want to Seer Says Cail, but she also didn’t want to say too much. “What do you mean?”

  “Why was Lacey so hot to give him to us? Did he eat her shoes or something?”

  Elain relaxed. “He loves the babies. Considering he helped me in Maine, it’s a damn good thing we have him.”

  She could tell from the doubt painting Cail’s features that he wasn’t totally okay with that answer, but he wasn’t going to challenge her, either. “How long will you be?”

  “Not long. Less than an hour.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.” She crooked a finger at Jasper, who jumped up and trotted over to her.

  She grabbed him by the collar and then poofed them both inside Brighton’s house.

  Her men hadn’t done anything with it yet. Brighton had left everything to Ain, Brodey, and Cail, but they hadn’t had the heart to sort through the house. They’d half-heartedly claimed they wanted to wait until some of their other brothers could also be there, but Elain sensed it was more guilt on their part, that Brighton had died presumably saving their children.

  Which was guilt on Elain’s part.

  Ryan had immediately swept through after the incident in Maine, to make sure there weren’t any other hellish little nuggets hidden there for the wolves to stumble across.

  But maybe Elain could see something Ryan hadn’t.

  As Jasper looked around, a low growl rumbled deep in his chest.

  “We’re alone, buddy. It’s okay.”

  “Crazy wolf. Bad wolf. Tried to hurt my babies.”

  Lina had Marston as her fixation, and Jasper had “his” babies. She couldn’t fault him for his devotion to them. “Do you smell any cockatrice?”

  He looked up at her.

  “Go ahead and sniff around,” she said.

  He put his nose to the floor and worked his way through the house. In the previously locked room that Brighton had used as his office, the one he’d kept locked during the housewarming barbecue he’d held, Elain spotted a large, square ceramic tile on a small table along the wall. On it, Brighton had drawn some sigils and had arranged various herbs. There were also several crystals, and a piece of parchment.

  Unlike the books, she couldn’t understand what it was, or what the sigils meant, despite wrapping her hand around the citrine amulet hanging from the chain around her neck and focusing.

  They were symbols. Symbols that must have meant something to Brighton, but meant nothing to her.

  Ryan would have seen it, though, when he swept the house. And recognized it if it was harmful.

  Right?

  Jasper growled again as he stared up at the table.

  “You smell a cockatrice?”

  “Dark Ones’ magick.”

  “Nothing else?”

  He went through the house again. Other than that strange altar, Jasper didn’t alert to anything except Brighton’s residual scent.

  “My babies were here.” He almost sounded accusatory as he glared at her.

  “It was a housewarming barbecue,” she said. “We were all here. It was before we knew how batshit crazy he was.” She turned. “And when are you going to tell me where you come from?”

  “Long story. Long time ago.”

  “Did you piss someone off and instead of a newt they turned you into a dog?”

  He sat, and Elain would swear he looked close to tears. “No. Everyone died. I almost died. She gave me a chance to save others. I couldn’t save my family.”

  Elain wasn’t sure which part of that admission to focus on first. “She who? Baba Yaga?”

  “No. Long ago. One of the others. Gave me new chance to fight the Dark Ones.”

  Okay, focus, Elain. You’re trying to figure this shit out, not Jasper. “How long are you going to be with us?”

  “As long as you need me and will have me.”

  “How old are you?”

  He shook his head. “I do not remember. Very old.”

  They returned to the ranch about twenty minutes later. Elain felt frustrated and defeated that she hadn’t learned anything else. She’d called Ryan on the phone and asked about the altar, but he hadn’t sensed anything from it that he could use, although he volunteered to try to identify it, if she wanted.

  She took pictures of the altar and its contents and texted them to him.

  That night, as she and her men stretched out on the sofas after the babies were in bed, Elain didn’t miss how Jasper frequently padded down the hallway to check on both babies.

  He’d have his paws full when she delivered the double burritos of doom.

  * * * *

  The next day brought the Triad nothing but more frustration. They went back and reviewed earlier videos of themselves talking and describing what they saw while they were inside the vision. They also reviewed the video Elain took on the ground in New Madrid.

  Elain even took another trip to New Madrid just to see if anything had changed to look more like what they’d seen in the visions, but nothing attracted her attention.

  “So what if that old woman we keep seeing has occluded herself?” Lina asked. “She sure as hell feels like a cockatrice to me. But how are we going to find her if we don’t know who she is or where she is?”

  “Not like we haven’t been through that before,” Zack muttered.

  “Huh?” Elain asked.

  “Edgar,” Lina and Zack said together.

  “And Lenny,” Zack added.

  “Marston,” Lina growled. “And that fucker’s still out there, living on borrowed time as soon as this shit sandwich is taken care of.”

  Elain desperately didn’t have the energy to go there with Lina right that moment. She put a hand on her friend’s shoulder and a flood of images washed through her, startling
her.

  Finally, Elain jerked her hand away.

  Zack stood. “Elain? You okay?”

  Eyes wide, Elain slowly shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

  Lina stood and turned. “Girlfriend, you’re scaring me. What’d you see?”

  “I saw how Edgar did what he did to occlude himself.”

  “We know that,” Lina said. “I watched him and Lenny and Marston kill Kael’s family to work the occlusion spell.”

  Elain shook her head. “No. It was more than that. He tried to work a love spell on you the same way his mom worked one on Rodolfo.”

  “What?” asked everyone else.

  Mai sat back. “How’d you see that? More importantly, why’d you see it now?”

  “I…I don’t know.” Elain finally met Lina’s gaze. “Altoids.”

  Lina’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”

  “He mixed the spell in with Altoids and other candy. His mom doctored food and drink that Rodolfo had.”

  Lina looked deep in thought. “When we first met in college…” Horror filled her face as she stared at Zack.

  Now Zack stood. “Shortcake, he’s dead. Gone. Don’t let him back into your head.”

  “The fucker threw a love spell on me?”

  Elain nodded.

  “Wait a minute,” Mai said. “Why did Rodolfo fall tail over teacup for Mercedes’ mother, but Lina didn’t for Edgar?”

  “She did,” Zack said, his focus still on Lina. “But not that hard.”

  Lina looked torn between sorrow and rage. “That fucking fucker!”

  “That still doesn’t explain why Lina didn’t fall for Edgar the way Rodolfo fell for Mercedes’ mother,” Mai said.

  “Her powers.” Zack nodded at Lina. “He could only do so much. Even though she didn’t know she had them, they still protected her in some ways.”

  Elain felt the temperature around Lina ratchet up several degrees.

  “I got her,” Zack said, grabbing Lina and herding her out the door toward their backyard to get her calmed down.

  Mai stood and walked over to Elain. “Why do you think that particular vision came to you now?” she asked Elain.

  “I don’t know. I wish I knew.”

  “No idea if it’s important or not?”

  “Nope.”