Men Love Witches Read online

  Nick cut a glance toward me and my throat went dry. “Lacey, there’s something you should—”

  Footsteps thundered out onto the front porch, and in an instant a blur zoomed past, quickly followed by a huge black dog. Adam had shifted to his beast form. It took me about half a heartbeat to realize why—Julian had escaped the manor. He threw himself at Lacey, catching her off guard.

  Adam snapped his jaws and caught Julian by the ankle. The vampire kicked the dog, but the moment’s distraction was enough time for Matthias to step in on his wife’s behalf. He grabbed Julian by the shoulders and threw him halfway across the front yard.

  “Don’t you hurt him!” Jewel squealed, taking another swing at Lacey.

  Adam got there first. He plowed into the vampire, sending her to the ground. He pinned both dinner-plate-sized paws to her shoulders and issued a low, warning growl.

  Unfortunately, Jewel wasn’t super good at following directions—even unspoken commands from a giant dog—and she sank her fangs into Adam’s shoulder. The dog snarled and snapped his jaws, but the momentary surprise had given her just enough time to plan her next move. She wrapped her legs around Adam’s dog’s waist and rolled. The movement reminded me of something I’d seen in a nature show about crocodiles. A death roll. It seemed fitting. At the end of the roll, she kicked and sent Adam flying in the opposite direction of Julian.

  “Adam!” I scrambled to my feet, but Adam was faster, already moving again before I reached his side. He streaked back to the fight between Matthias and Julian, Lacey and Jewel. My gaze hitched on the houses across the street. Two more were illuminated and I thought I saw another pair of curtains flutter.

  “Bat wings!” I huffed, charging back to the melee. “Stop it!” I shouted. “All of you. This wasn’t Jewel or Julian. It was Nathaniel and Trisha!”

  The fighting stopped and four pairs of vampire eyes—all dark and inky—snapped to me. “What?” Lacey screeched.

  Nick nodded. “I found the stone. It was in a hide-a-key on the Rysons’ car. They probably stashed it there, knowing you’d search the house, and maybe the interior of their vehicle, too, which in hindsight, we probably should have.”

  Jewel snarled something under her breath.

  Lacey whirled around, staring up at the manor. “And who is watching them now?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Her legs were already pumping before she finished asking it. Matthias looked at me. “Can you hold them?”

  Biting my lip, I glanced across the street. It was too late. There was no point in holding back now.

  Nick seemed to read my thoughts. “Only if you agree to let us call the SPA. They need to come and secure the scene.”

  Code for wipe the memories of everyone on the street.

  Matthias’s jaw tensed, but he gave a quick nod before turning to run after his wife.

  I dished out a pair of spells in rapid-fire, binding both Jewel and Julian with thick cords of pulsing magic. Both of them made their objections loud and clear—emphasis on loud. “Hey!” I snapped. “Keep it up and I’ll hex the pair of you with a voiceless spell!”

  “I told you not to come here,” Jewel growled, directing her fury at her boyfriend.

  “I didn’t have a choice!” Julian fired back. “You might not like it, but this is my job! I couldn’t turn it down. I don’t get to just say no thanks when my boss has an assignment for me.”

  Jewel’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. “Oh, yeah? And does that include the time you spend together off the clock?”

  Julian looked like he’d swallowed his tongue.

  “Yeah,” Jewel continued, “I know about that. At first, I thought it was just rumors, but when I was here the other night waiting for you, I saw the way she looked at you.”

  “I can’t help it if she’s in love with me!” Julian protested. “You know that I only wanted to be with you.”

  “Save it, Julian. Lacey told me you flipped on me, gave up the whole plan. You were only ever in this for yourself!”

  “Baby, come on, be rational about this. She was lying to you!”

  Adam growled at the pair of them.

  Matthias reemerged from the manor. No one had bothered to shut the front door. His face was ashen. “Nathaniel took off. He’s gone.”

  “I swear, I didn’t know anything about it!” Trisha exclaimed. We’d all gathered in the living room—including Julian and Jewel, though I was about to lock them in the pantry if they didn’t stop bickering.

  “Why would Nathaniel take the stone?” I asked Trisha.

  Lacey, Lord Sánchez, Matthias, and Adam were all out looking for him. According to Trisha and Aretha, he’d bolted when Julian and Adam ran out of the dining room. Trisha tried to chase after him, thinking they were meant to escape together, only for him to shove her so hard she knocked Lord Sánchez to the ground when she crashed into him.

  “I—I don’t know,” Trisha stammered, looking around the room, desperate for an ally. “He hasn’t said anything about it to me! Please, you have to believe me. If I was in on it, wouldn’t he have taken me with him?”

  Lord Sánchez considered her point. “If they’re acting, they deserve some kind of award. The way he pushed her was—real.”

  Trisha buried her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling. When she looked up, her cheeks were stained with tears. “We’ve been estranged for years now,” she confessed. “Living separate lives, almost entirely. He stays in California, while I stay at our home in Portland. The only time we get together is for Court events, to put on appearances.”

  “Why not get a divorce?” Nick asked.

  Trisha looked at him like he was the biggest idiot in the world.

  Aretha scoffed. “You clearly know very little of vampire affairs,” she said. “Once territories merge, there is no undoing it. No one gets to say oopsies and have things go back to the way they were before.”

  Nick gave me a puzzled look. “But aren’t Lacey’s parents divorced? And he’s the Baron of the East.”

  “They never officially divorced, and Lady Vaughn still holds her title,” Aretha corrected. “Besides, they don’t hold nearly as much territory as the Rysons. A split like that would be disastrous for the stability of the Court.”

  I blinked. “Unless a new order of power were to rise up.”

  “What?” Aretha snapped.

  “I’m just saying, the stone would be one heck of a bargaining chip if Nathaniel was looking for a permanent way out of his marriage.”

  Trisha started sobbing all over again.

  “Humph,” Jewel sighed. “Guess I should have taken him up on his offer after all.”

  Everyone turned to the bound vampire. “What offer?” Julian demanded.

  Jewel shrugged. “A couple of years ago, he was flying solo at a Court retreat, the one in Aspen. He was very clearly on the prowl. He propositioned me at the bar one night. I was seeing someone else at the time, so I turned him down. I think he left the bar with Angelica Ferguson that night. Maybe he stole the stone to be with her.” Jewel’s eyes cut to Julian.

  Before Julian could respond, the front door swung open and Lord Sánchez frog-marched Lord Ryson into the manor. He shoved him into an armchair and growled, “Don’t even think about it.”

  Trisha flew at Nathaniel, claws out, ready to fillet the side of his face. “You bastard!”

  No one stepped in to save Nathaniel from his wife’s scorn. She slapped him hard across the face. “You won’t even go to marriage counseling for me, but for Angelica Ferguson you’ll risk your life to steal some stone?”

  Adam trotted into the manor, panting hard. He came to my side and sat down. Lacey and Matthias came in last. “The SPA just arrived,” Lacey declared calmly. “I imagine they will have some questions for all of us, but please let me speak with the lead agent first.”

  No one had any objections. As expected, Agent Bramble was the lead agent. She handled any mishaps in Beechwood Harbor—and there were many. Meryl came in wit
h the group, too, as she was specifically assigned to the town. Nick tensed beside me when she swept into the room and pinned him with a surprised stare. “Nick?”

  He gave me a quick glance and then hurried across the room to pull her aside. Agent Bramble took a look around the scene before exhaling. “All right. Who wants to go first? Holly?”

  “Actually, I believe Lady Vaughn would like a word with you,” I replied, pointing at Lacey.

  Bramble’s brows lifted, but she gave a quick nod and went into the dining room to discuss things with Lacey. Trisha had crumpled to the floor, her face hidden behind her hands. My heart twinged on her behalf. I didn’t know the full story of her marriage, but it was easy to see the pain it had caused the woman.

  “What will happen now?” I asked, directing my attention to Lord Sánchez, Aretha, and Matthias. “If Lord Ryson is, um, imprisoned, what happens to the Court?”

  “He will be stripped of his title and will face the Court’s judgment,” Matthias replied solemnly. “Lady Ryson will remain in control of the West, and be free to choose another partner, though one will likely be suggested to her, to secure her position over the territories Nathaniel brought into the marriage. A brother or cousin, perhaps.”

  I pulled a face. “That sounds so old-fashioned. Why can’t she choose who she wants to marry, or even if she wants to?”

  Trisha looked up, her red eyes narrowed. “Oh, to live in such a simple world.”

  “Cheer up, dear,” Nathaniel said, his voice dripping with acid, “we both know that making decisions isn’t your strong suit. Anything more complicated than figuring out what entrée to serve or which party dress to wear isn’t of interest to you anyway.”

  Trisha flashed her fangs, but Lord Sánchez barked out an order for the pair to knock it off, and they surprisingly obeyed.

  Agent Bramble and Lacey reemerged from the dining room a few minutes later. Agent Bramble was always poised and put together, even under the most stressful of circumstances. I’d seen her face off against dragon-shifters and violent sorceresses, and barely so much as blink. But it was clear she felt out of her depth being suddenly thrust into the politics of vampires.

  “Right, so, I think perhaps this all might be best handled at headquarters,” she said, addressing the group. “Lady Vaughn, I believe you can arrange for your guests to come to the headquarters. My agents will take Ms. Molder, Mr. Cross, and Lord Ryson into custody.” She looked at each vampire in turn as she listed their names. Then her gaze shifted to me. “Holly … Adam—” she looked at the giant dog beside me, “—I’ll leave Agent Miller here to take your official statements. No use in dragging you all down to headquarters as well.”

  Cringing, I lifted one finger. “I think we might need to have an agent pay a visit to some of the neighbors across the street.”

  Agent Bramble’s eyes widened in understanding and she quickly dispatched one of the agents she’d brought with her to go see to the memory wiping. “Right,” she said, once the agent was gone. “Anything else?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good. Well, then, let’s get going. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night, and involve a lot of paperwork.”

  Adam padded from the room as the remaining agents rounded up Jewel, Julian, and Nathaniel into custody, and marched them from the house in a single-file line. He reappeared a minute later, dressed in jeans and a plain black T-shirt.

  The other vampires left not long after, and when they’d gone, Lacey turned to Adam and me. “I’ll send a courier tomorrow to collect everyone’s belongings,” she told me. “No need to pack it up. They’ll handle all of that.”

  “Thank you, Lacey.”

  Smiling, she embraced me. When she pulled back, she kept a hold on my arms for a moment longer. “Thank you for hosting us,” she said. “I’m truly sorry we weren’t better houseguests.”

  I smiled. “Well, hey, nothing wound up broken, so there’s that.”

  Laughing, she nodded in agreement. “Well, I suppose I’ll be seeing you all again in a few weeks,” she said, before shooting me a wicked grin. “That is, unless Holly comes to her senses and decides to pull a runaway bride.”

  Laughing, I leaned into Adam’s side. “Not much chance of that happening.”

  She smiled and tossed her hands into the air. “Well, can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Matthias grinned as he wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist. “And here I thought you were finally starting to soften up.”

  We watched them drive away from the window in the living room. When their SUV’s taillights faded from view, Adam let the curtain fall back into place. “Is anyone else totally weirded out that Lacey is actually happy happy now?”

  Smiling, I took a seat on the couch. “I think it’s nice.”

  Nick and Meryl came into the living room, both looking a little tense. I got the feeling Nick was going to be living in the doghouse for a little while, and it had nothing to do with the next night’s full moon.

  “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on, Meryl,” I said, shifting around to look up at her from over the back of the couch. “We really were just trying to protect you.”

  She nodded, but didn’t hold my gaze for more than a moment. “I understand.”

  “What do you think will happen with the stone?” Adam asked her.

  “I really have no idea. But I guess the agency’s deflection from anything vampire suddenly makes sense, if this peace treaty is real. They probably didn’t want us blowing anything up before things could officially be hammered out.” Meryl paused and ran her fingers over the slicked-back part of her ponytail. “But it sounds like once it’s done, we’ll finally be able to do our job and take out these rogue factions once and for all.”

  “I think they’ll throw it into a vault somewhere and use it as a kind of nuclear option if the vamps act up again,” I said. “I doubt the majority of them will want to use that power, but it’s probably good to have as a last resort if the Vampire Council refuses to dissolve quietly.”

  Adam sighed. “Whatever they do, I think we can all agree it’s best the agency keeps tabs on it from here on out. Imagine the damage that could have been done if the Molders had gotten their hands on it.”

  I shuddered. It wasn’t a possibility I wanted to entertain even for a second. All I wanted to do was take a nice long bubble bath and pretend none of it ever happened. I glanced up at Meryl. “Hey, any chance one of those agents across the street could come back and wipe my memory of tonight?”

  A quick smile broke through the gray cloud hovering over Meryl. “I don’t think that jives with regulations, Holly.”

  “Ugh.” I heaved myself off the couch. “Well, then I’m going to need a big cup of tea before we start the interview part of the evening.”

  Muttering to myself, I padded to the kitchen.

  Adam called after me, “Just remember, gorgeous, this booking from Hades is paying for the wedding!”

  Smiling, I pushed open the kitchen door. “I would have preferred if Lacey just bought us something from Crate & Barrel instead!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Even after the vampires’ dramatic departure, life didn’t fully go back to normal. Mostly because we were speeding ever faster toward the wedding, and every day seemed to bring some overlooked detail to the surface. Luckily, we had our friends to help. Harmony was a rock star in the effort to package up over a hundred favors for the guests to take home at the end of the night. Evangeline hired a cleaning service to come in and take over household chores so we could focus on other things. Anastasia took care of following up with guests who hadn’t yet RSVP’d.

  Meryl’s tip for a good seamstress turned out to be most useful, as I suddenly found myself with a dress in need of altering. As promised, my aunt had brought it to the manor, a week and a half after the vampires left. We invited her to stay for dinner, and while it was a somewhat stiff affair, I went to bed that night feeling unblocked, and realiz
ed how much the small step toward reconciliation really meant to me. Adam asked me if I wanted to invite her to the wedding, but I told him no. Her apology had only started to twist the knob on a door that I’d long ago slammed shut, but that didn’t mean I was ready to throw it wide open and roll out a red carpet. The wounds were too deep. Perhaps in the future though, maybe there would be a place for her around the table at Thanksgiving, or a gift under the Christmas tree with her name written on its tag. But not today.

  Posy and Earl stayed with us over the final weeks leading to the wedding, though every interaction with them was bittersweet. Scarlet and I had several coffee meetings to discuss the issue. She’d had a lot of experience in the area of saying goodbye and letting ghosts move on. It gave her a sympathetic ear and made it easy for me to work through my feelings over the idea of the pair crossing over to the Otherworld.

  Cassie and Chief Lincoln hosted our rehearsal dinner at their house, two nights before the wedding. Cassie was darn near ready to pop and I’d tried to talk her out of it, but she’d insisted. Their new house had a back deck and they’d ordered a long outdoor dining table, with room for all of us to sit and eat together. Afterward, we meandered down to the firepit and roasted marshmallows and told stories and relived memories well into the night.

  And at the center of it all was Adam. There were moments in those final weeks where I truly had to catch myself and soak it all in. I was marrying the perfect guy, and all the late-night walks on the beach, lazy Sunday mornings curled up on the front porch with coffee, afternoons wandering the woods, or evenings spent surrounded by our best friends roasting marshmallows, would go on forever. Getting married was the start of a new chapter, but in many ways, I hoped that the chapter looked like the ones we’d already written together. We had made a beautiful life and I was endlessly grateful to be able to continue it with him.