“I’ll take the book.” Harrison’s voice was steady as she took control. “Leah, you bring that bag of weenie and all his junk back to Tucker. Someone must know how to wake him up. Con and Lorie, you should take Sarah back to the Salem house and stay under the radar until we sort this out.”
Con shuddered. “You don’t have to tell me twice. I think we all need a shower or five to shake this particular visit off our shoes.”
Sarah couldn’t move. She wasn’t sure why. She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from Winston Maris. She was frozen. Trapped.
“Sarah?” Lorie slid his arm around her back for support. “What do you need, sweetheart? What can I do?”
Her mind was reeling. “Did you hear what he said? He recognized my name. He knew my name.”
Lorie leaned his head against hers. “I know, my love. We’ll figure this out. I promise. We won’t stop until we know what the hell is going on. Whatever it takes.”
Con stood and turned to face them, his expression resolute. “Whatever it takes.”
Leah walked over to Harrison and shook her to get her attention. “Why do I get the feeling this has nothing to do with my little jewelry sting? Harrison? Who is she? What is going on?”
“Ask your brother.”
Chapter Eight
She was sitting in the steaming bathtub, her hands cupped and filled with water as she watched Con attempting to fulfill his promise. She’d challenged him to cook breakfast from scratch. No magic. No clothes.
So far he hadn’t set anything important on fire, but she was watching, just in case.
Lorie’s voice startled her, causing the water to spill out of her hands. “Why do I get the feeling you’ve done that before?”
Sarah felt her face flush, but sent him an innocent grin. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lorie walked inside the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, his hand dipping in the soothing water to caress her thigh. They’d been here for six weeks, just the three of them, watching television and cuddling in Lorie’s special room. After the madness of the first few days following her release, it was a welcome change.
She’d gotten to know her triad. Their habits and expressions. Their fantasies. And she’d gotten to know herself again through their eyes. She knew it would take time for her to truly heal herself. It wouldn’t be as easy as mending a physical wound—but she knew now there was hope.
And still after all this time together and all they’d been through, they could not keep their hands off each other. It was more than a good sign. It was paradise.
“Are you finished?”
He nodded and she brought her knees up protectively, wrapping her arms around her legs while she studied his grim expression. They’d bound the second book along with the first, to give them a chance to study it before it was destroyed, as it had to be when Harrison broke the spell. Lorie had brought it here, saying he had to be the one to read it. But only in a room Con shielded, as far away from Sarah as he could get and still be in the same house. It seemed she wasn’t the only one nervous about that book.
They still weren’t sure what would happen when she and the rest of the Abbott family arrived this evening to end this curse once and for all. Harrison was confident that Sarah wouldn’t be affected.
She wished she were as certain.
Sarah splashed his arm playfully, trying to appear more relaxed than she was. “Tell me. Was it like the other book? Recipes and bad poems?”
His sigh was telling. “Right now I wish it was, but no. It was Aaron Winston’s journal. It was…Sarah it was everything. A confession. A psychotic rant. A self-hating, tell-all Magian manifesto.”
“Manifesto?”
Lorie seemed to be in a state of disbelief. “They weren’t just friends, Sarah. Robert, Aaron and the others. They all had something in common. Envy. Of other Magian’s powers. Of privilege. Of their siblings. They formed their own society and made lists of the people they despised. Ways to get rid of them. To rule.” He shook his head. “They were delusional, but harmless at first. Until that night. He wasn’t even sure what it was about that particular night that had set them off, but no one walked away from that Triune without blood on his or her hands. And Winston, the only one of them skilled with spell craft, became their savior and the person they most feared. He used his abilities and their connections to make it all go away. Records. Memories. He even instigated the trials and deaths of innocent humans condemned as witches, as a distraction. An echo of what really happened, the scars left on our world from the act that couldn’t be entirely erased.”