Snakeroot

  Logan half agreed with that sentiment. Though he was happy to be his father’s heir, Logan’s pride derived from his mother’s ancestry. Her bloodline could be traced back to Eira: the first Keeper.

  Not that it mattered. Now that the Rift was closed, there was no such thing as a Keeper. Logan looked at his smooth, unlined hand and slender fingers holding his cigarette. He sighed, wondering how soon he’d show signs of age.

  “Still melancholy?” Chase offered a lazy smile. “How can I cheer you up?”

  Logan looked away from Chase, ignoring the flirtatious curve of his lips. With silky black hair and olive eyes, Chase would have been a welcome distraction. But Logan couldn’t afford distraction right now. Logan’s gaze flicked back to Chase.

  “I’ll think of something,” he answered. Logan didn’t want to fan flames, but neither did he want to smother any spark Chase might be kindling.

  Logan supposed that might be the one good thing about having the elder generation of Keepers gone: no more antiquated rules about sexuality. No more lying about who he was. And from the sly gleam in Chase’s eyes, it was clear he counted that fact as a silver lining too.

  Pushing her lip into a pout at being ignored by the boys, Audrey said, “I miss Joel.”

  Chase groaned, throwing his arm over his eyes. “Not again.”

  “Who’s Joel?” Logan asked.

  “Her wolf pet,” Chase answered. “Efron sent him to Father to be our bodyguard, remember?”

  “Ah, that’s right.” Logan recalled that Joel had been a brawny wolf of the Bane pack. One of the youngest, but still a decade older than the wolves Logan had been set to inherit.

  Audrey threw a silk pillow at him. “He was not my pet. Joel adored me.”

  “He had to adore you,” Chase replied. “You just chose to believe his sentiments were genuine.”

  “How do you know they weren’t?” She flipped her glossy raven ringlets as if to prove a point.

  “Because he was a Guardian,” Chase said. He lifted his arm to look at Logan. “Am I right?”

  Logan shuddered, remembered the gurgles coming from his father’s throat after Sabine tore it to shreds. He hadn’t revealed the truth of Efron’s demise. It was too horrible to repeat. If there were still Guardians around, representing a similar threat, Logan might have felt compelled to warn his peers. But just as there were no more Keepers, there were no more Guardians.

  “Even if you’re right,” Audrey said, sulking, “it was still awful that we had to shoot him.”

  “There was a wolf running wild through the house,” Chase countered. “It’s not like we could have released him into the Hamptons.”

  “Don’t mock me.” Audrey glared at her brother. “I liked Joel. He was lovely.”

  “We could have made him into a rug.” Chase grinned wickedly. “Or stuffed him. You could still have cuddled him in bed every night.”

  Audrey jumped up. “That’s vile. I was sleeping with the boy, not the wolf.”

  “I certainly hope so. Though if you’re that kinky, I’m kind of impressed.” Chase laughed, nonplussed by Audrey’s sudden pummeling of his chest. Logan began to laugh too. Audrey was neither kinky nor did she know how to throw a punch.

  Finally shoving Audrey back onto the divan, Chase asked Logan, “What’s really bothering you?” He paused, drawing a breath. “Money trouble?”

  Audrey gasped, narrowing her eyes in warning at Chase.

  “No, no,” Logan said quickly, and was rewarded by the tension going out of the room. “Money is never an issue.”

  He wasn’t deceiving them. Logan had problems, but none of them were financial. The Keepers were bereft of their magic, but worldly assets they still held in spades. And in terms of net worth, Logan remained among the wealthiest of Keepers. Efron Bane had been shrewd in his investments and solicitous of all the right relationships: finance, politics, entertainment—there wasn’t a place Efron was without connections. Now those strings had been placed in Logan’s hand to pull as he wanted.

  “When you called, we thought”—Audrey threw Logan an apologetic glance—“you might need help.”

  Logan took a long pull from his cigarette. “I do need help. Just not that kind.”

  He didn’t know if Chase and Audrey would understand, even if they were sympathetic to him. It would be easier if his aim was vengeance or sheer hatred. But neither of those motivations matched the stirring in his blood. The sense of loss that followed him no matter where he went.

  “Two things,” Logan said. “I need access to your father’s library.”

  “You shouldn’t have trouble finding it,” Chase remarked. “It takes up half of the east wing.”

  “His private library,” Logan said, tapping ash from the cigarette’s glowing tip.

  Chase and Audrey exchanged a glance.

  “Yes, I know about it.” Logan looked at each of them steadily. “I assume you know where the key is.”

  “What’s the second thing?” Chase asked.

  Logan smiled at him, noting that he hadn’t answered the question.

  “Some spells require three supplicants to succeed,” Logan said, pointing at Chase, Audrey, and himself. “One. Two. Three.”

  The twins stared at him for several minutes. Logan found himself enjoying how disconcerted they seemed.

  Chase leaned forward. “This is a joke.”

  “Not at all.” Logan stabbed out the cigarette and stood up. “I need to cast a few spells. Learn magics from the books your father has secreted away in his library. Then I’ll want to cast more spells.”

  “Why on earth would you go meddling with magics?” Audrey asked, exasperated. “Didn’t you tell us when you arrived that you feel like you have a target on your back?”

  Logan pursed his lips but didn’t answer.

  “Casting spells is like planting a homing beacon on yourself,” Audrey continued. “Do you want the Searchers to find you?”

  He didn’t. “I don’t have any choice.”

  “Of course you do,” Chase replied. He waved at their surroundings. “What more do you need than this? Can spells bring you happiness?”

  “I’m not after happiness,” Logan told him. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was that had driven him to an obsession with the Keepers’ history. Why he hired thieves to ransack Rowan Estate and bring him as much of Bosque Mar’s collection as they could manage. One of the fools had been caught. Damn him. But what Logan had managed to get his hands on proved useful enough. It at least pointed him in the right direction.

  Logan couldn’t expect the twins to understand something he didn’t fully comprehend himself, but he needed their help.

  Giving Audrey a direct look, he said, “How do you expect you’ll look in ten years?”

  She lifted her chin in pride.

  But when Logan said, “Twenty?” her face fell.

  If there was anything Keepers had in common, it was vanity.

  “Bosque Mar kept us from aging,” Chase interjected. “And he’s gone.”

  Logan’s fists clenched at Bosque’s name. “I know.”

  “So what are you after?”

  Logan sighed. He’d talked himself into trusting Chase and Audrey, but that didn’t make confiding in them easy. “I just want to know—I need to know—if there’s a way to bring him back.”

  “Bring him back?” Audrey snorted. “Have you forgotten your history, Logan? The Rift was opened by a great knight. You may be Efron Bane’s son, but a knight you are not.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” Logan said with a shrug, “but I think I could be a warlock if I tried.”

  “A warlock?” Chase tilted his head, regarding Logan with curiosity. That was a good sign.

  “Yes.” Logan leaned back against the couch cushions, trying to appear at ease, though his pulse was frantic.

  “Interesting.” Chase kept his eyes on Logan while Audrey clucked her tongue in disapproval.

  “It’s a waste of time,” she said.
>
  “Then you don’t have to help,” Logan told her. His gaze moved slowly over her face. “If you find humanity so satisfying, of course you wouldn’t want to bother with this.”

  Audrey blanched, clutching at the edge of the divan. Chase looked at his sister and then returned his attention to Logan.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll help you.”

  THOUGH SABINE KNEW the wolf no longer lived within her, she still felt the sway of its feral instincts. She wondered if the lingering sense of the wolf would fade with time, or if it would remain a part of her—like a phantom limb, reminding her of a past now gone forever.

  But there were moments when Sabine could feel her hackles rise, warning her of imminent danger. And that bristling along her spine had become a frequent occurrence, taking hold of her at least once a day. Sometimes more.

  Shrugging it off as habit, or something as simple as muscle memory, would have been easier if not for the timing of her heightened tension. The gnawing sense of something amiss, something lurking in a shadowed corner, a waiting horror that couldn’t be seen but was nonetheless there: all of it began with the ransacking of Rowan Estate’s library.

  Sabine couldn’t bring herself to call it a coincidence. Something was wrong. Very wrong. But what that was, she hadn’t a clue. All Sabine could do was watch and wait until the problem revealed itself.

  And that was why Sabine, warrior wolf of the Bane pack and sometime sexy beast—as Ethan liked to call her when he wanted to rile her up—had perfected the skill of pasting on a bright smile and simultaneously walking backward and describing the architecture and history of Rowan Estate. All while wearing a name tag.

  In Sabine’s days as a Guardian, if someone had suggested she would spend her future days wearing a name tag and performing a job with the title “docent,” she would have bitten his fingers off. When Sabine had informed Ethan of her intention to take up the post as director of tours at Rowan Estate, he’d laughed. When he realized she was dead serious, he’d first balked, then protested.

  “You’re a fighter,” Ethan had argued. “One of the best I’ve seen. You belong in the field.”

  “I belong here,” Sabine had countered. And after those words, and a pointed look, there had been no further discussion.

  Having just concluded that afternoon’s tour, Sabine returned to her watchpost at the top of the stairs, bidding the visitors to return to the foyer and make their way to the exit. The final minutes of the tour were those that most closely touched Sabine’s own life, as she discussed people the tourists assumed were long dead but whom Sabine had known, served, and despised. Speaking their names in a matter-of-fact tone always proved a challenge: Efron Bane, Lumine Nightshade. That Sabine was no longer a wolf didn’t seem to change the way the memory of the pack masters made her want to snarl.

  As the director of Rowan Estate’s burgeoning new tourism business, Sabine wasn’t expected to guide the tours herself. But she found winding her way through the mansion’s halls, recounting its past, and rendering its rooms legible to strangers to be rather cathartic. As the doorways and passages of the estate became familiar, its specters faded along with Sabine’s lingering fear. She’d done literal battle in this place, had soaked its priceless carpets with the blood of her former master, given up a part of herself to become someone new. Though she couldn’t deny it had been the site of countless horrors, to Sabine, Rowan Estate had come to represent a powerful shift in her life: a moment of choice, of liberation.

  As the last tourist disappeared from the mansion’s foyer, Sabine anticipated quiet and solace for the remainder of the day. A sudden, overwhelming sense of danger, followed by a loud crash from behind her, chased away those peaceful notions.

  Sabine whirled around, her gaze fixed on the closed double doors that led to Rowan Estate’s library. The library was one of the sites off limits to tours—not only was that part of the building still under repair, but the Searchers were still discovering secret cabinets and hidden bookcases that contained volumes and paraphernalia deemed valuable and potentially dangerous.

  That was where Sabine had killed him. Where she’d felt exhilaration and the release of so many years of pain as her jaws had crushed Efron Bane’s windpipe and his wicked blood had gushed over her tongue and painted her muzzle crimson.

  More loud sounds erupted from behind the heavy doors. Large objects were either falling down or being thrown around the room.

  What the hell?

  For a brief moment, Sabine wondered if Logan’s thieves had returned for a second shot at their lost bounty.

  No way. Sabine chided herself from the brash thought.

  Ever since the first break-in, security at Rowan Estate had been tightened to the point of overkill. No one got into the library without clearance. Which meant . . .

  Sabine flung the doors open and strode into the massive chamber. These days the two-story space looked more like a theater set in the midst of construction than a functional library. Most of the shelves had been emptied as the Tordis Scribes devoted their time to cataloging and studying the volumes from Bosque’s collection. Though the exterior wall that had been obliterated when Shay Doran had closed the Rift was now intact, the fireplace and stained glass windows adorning said wall were still works in progress. Scaffolding and protective tarps now decorated the room instead.

  Sabine’s gaze tracked through the room, seeking the source of the disruption.

  A woman stood in front of a shelf that still held books on the library’s second level. Unaware that she was no longer alone, the woman remained focused on her task—which as far as Sabine could tell seemed to be pulling books off the shelf, flipping through the first pages, and then, with noises of frustration, casting the books aside.

  Climbing the wrought iron spiral stairs to the second floor, Sabine crept toward the woman, trying to determine who this intruder was.

  “It has to be here!” the woman muttered, throwing another the book to the floor.

  Whoever she is, she obviously was never a librarian, Sabine thought as she observed the mangled tomes on the floor. The Tordis Scribes would pitch a fit if they saw this—Well, not a fit, they’re too tight-laced for fits. But there would be weeping and lamentations for sure.

  Since the woman was alone, Sabine didn’t see her as a threat. With a polite clearing of her throat, Sabine said in her best tour-guide voice:

  “Excuse me. Can I help you?”

  The woman pivoted to face Sabine, startled by the interruption.

  Now that Sabine had a clear view of the woman’s face, she gasped. “Oh. What are you doing here?”

  A rude question, Sabine knew, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sabine had few occasions to interact with Sarah Doran. Shay’s mother was obviously much older than Sabine, and since her sudden return to the Searchers, Sarah and her husband, Tristan, had mostly kept to themselves, which made it that much stranger to find Sarah tearing through books in Rowan Estate’s library.

  “That’s none of your business,” Sarah answered Sabine sharply. “Just leave me be.”

  Sabine bristled at the dismissal. “I can’t do that. You don’t belong in the library and you’re damaging the books.” She swept her hand toward the discarded volumes. “These are all meant to be sorted and cataloged by the Scribes. You’re interfering with the Arrow’s directive.”

  With a derisive snort, Sarah said, “I asked the Tordis bookworms for their help and they ignored me. As for Anika . . . she understands. She wouldn’t mind that I’m here.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t just let you keep doing this.” Sabine frowned. She wasn’t exactly in charge of the library, but Sabine still had a sense of responsibility toward the mansion as a whole.

  “Who do you think you are to tell me what to do?” Sarah’s lip curled in a snarl that was strangely wolf-like. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”

  “You’re Sarah Doran. Shay’s mother.” With a smile and a shrug, she added
, “I’m Sabine.”

  Sarah’s face fell when Sabine spoke her name. “Sabine? You’re . . . you were one of them.”

  “One of them?” Sabine was taken aback by Sarah’s abrupt shift in demeanor. She seemed almost afraid of Sabine whereas a moment ago she’d been haughty.

  “A Guardian,” Sarah answered. “But you’re the one who stayed.”

  Sabine nodded. Sarah’s eyes darkened with a sorrow so fierce, Sabine had to look away.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah murmured. “I’ve been terribly rude to you. It’s just . . . no one will help me.”

  “Maybe I can,” Sabine said. “What are you looking for?”

  “Anything.” Sarah glanced at the half-emptied shelves. “Anything about him.”

  “About Shay?” Sabine asked. “I’m pretty sure his room is still intact. We don’t use it on the tour . . .” Sabine let her words trail off, not knowing whether they would be helpful.

  Sarah shook her head. “No. I’ve been in his room. It’s not his things I’m trying to find. It’s information about him. About what they did to him. There must be records here. The Scribes say they haven’t found anything, but I’m sure there’s some account of his life here.”

  Sabine’s chest tightened at the implication of what Sarah had said. “You think the Keepers did something to Shay.”

  “They must have,” Sarah said. “Otherwise how could he have . . . why would he . . .” Sarah’s gaze became piercing. “You must understand what I’m talking about. You’re the one who stayed.”

  Sabine’s mouth formed a small o as the meaning of Sarah’s words settled in.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Sarah continued, seizing on Sabine’s silence as confirmation. “He wouldn’t have become one of them without some dark magic altering his being. Why would he leave us?”

  “I think it’s more complicated than that,” Sabine answered hesitantly. For all she knew about Shay, the Keepers could have done something to him, but she didn’t think so. It hadn’t been Keeper magic that closed the Rift and returned the world to its natural order. Somehow in that transformation, Shay had become a wolf—a pack leader. Sabine had seen him in the forests around Haldis Cavern; Shay and all of Sabine’s former packmates. They seemed happy, and nothing about their existence smacked of nefarious forces at work.