Asylum (Causal Enchantment #2)(9)
“But why? After everything that’s happened, I still lap up what people give me like a dog!”
Hey, now, Max grumbled.
I patted his massive paw in apology. “You’re no ordinary dog, Max.” That was an understatement. Max and his brothers were werebeasts, created by Mortimer before Sofie’s magic fried all vampire venom in her struggle to do the impossible—turn from witch to vampire. Besides their giant muscular bodies, they had the regenerative abilities and super senses of a human vampire, as well as telepathic links with their maker. Except Max. He was special. When Max switched his allegiance to me after the attack in Central Park, I began hearing him inside my head. It was only one way, unfortunately, but he understood every word that came out of my mouth.
Leo shifted in his chair to face me. “Honestly, I don’t know what keeps your spirits so high. With all that has happened to you, we expected one jaded young woman. And yet you keep surprising us with this unworldly resilience.” He smiled gently. “That’s a good thing, by the way.”
“I guess so,” I murmured after a moment.
“It is!” he insisted. “It’s what makes you so damn lovable.”
I leaned into Max’s shoulder, hiding the blush I felt creeping into my cheeks at the compliment, such attention unfamiliar to me. I’d spent the last five years utterly invisible. Of course now I knew that was all Sofie’s doing, her compelling everyone to keep their distance for fear of Viggo murdering those close to me.
Leo turned back toward the stove, chuckling to himself. “And don’t forget, you weren’t the only one tricked. I’ll bet Viggo and Mortimer are feeling quite foolish right about now.”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “Why’d you do it?”
The light from the fire burning in the wood stove coupled with a candle on the side table provided enough light to observe the old man’s profile, brows puckered as he frowned, deep in thought. “I was in Sofie’s debt.”
Shock widened my eyes. “She forced you?”
Leo’s head whipped back toward me. “Oh no!” he said, his voice suddenly passionate. “Not in the least. I wanted to help her.” With a sigh, he bent forward to ease another log into the fire. “Sofie gave me back my wife.”
A small gasp escaped my sagging jaw.
“Oh, don’t be so shocked! Did you think I was born in a three-piece suit?” he exclaimed, straightening the red and orange argyle sweater vest he had donned, a contrast from the formal clothing he’d worn in Manhattan as Viggo’s butler.
Leo . . . in another life? Married? It was reasonable, yet I couldn’t picture it. Swallowing my shock, I asked, “How did Sofie . . . give you back your wife?”
He smiled. “One winter, my wife—Maeve—started having difficulty breathing. To this day, I don’t know what caused it. A weak heart, perhaps. Being what I am, I tried healing her, but I couldn’t. I tried every spell in the book. I begged every sorcerer I knew, who tried every spell in their repertoire. Nothing. No one could fix her. Not with normal magic, anyway.” He leaned back in his chair. “A friend of mine suggested I ask the Fates.”
The Fates. I remembered Sofie mentioning these Fates. “Isn’t that what Sofie did for my spell?”
Leo’s head bobbed up and down, his brow furrowing. “Dangerous and powerful stuff, that type of magic. It can be deadly. Few sorcerers will even attempt a Causal Enchantment. Most don’t have enough magic in them to call on them, even if they’re brave enough. I don’t, that’s for certain.” A wrinkled index finger rose to wag in the air. “But there was one, it seemed, a powerful and fearless French sorceress who had turned herself eighty years earlier using a Causal Enchantment for the love of a vampire, only to accidentally kill him. I had heard about her; she was a fable by that point, really. No one knew if she still lived. Most thought she had met her demise by fire, or something equally poetic. If she did exist, she had dropped off the grid completely.
“I was desperate. I had to find her, had to see what she could do that no one else could. And so I searched. I researched every French sorcery guild tree; I picked the brains of every elderly witch still alive. And I finally found a name: Sofie Girard.”
“Girard,” I repeated softly. Of course Sofie had a last name!
He nodded. “Once I had her name, I used a type of spell called a ‘broadcast spell’ to seek her out. I’ll explain that another time.” He waved away my perplexed look. “Maeve was so weak by this point, her breathing ragged. I didn’t expect her to last another week.” Leo paused and swallowed heavily.
“The morning after I sent the broadcast out, I walked into our little kitchen in Dublin to find this stunning red-haired woman perched on the counter.” He chuckled. “At first I thought she was going to strike me dead for seeking her out—those pale green eyes seemed to dissect me.” Leo leaned forward until he perched on the edge of his chair, suddenly animated as he relived the memory. “But she pushed past me without a word and walked over to the couch where my wife lay, wheezing terribly and barely conscious by now. Sofie leaned forward, close to my wife’s face. I didn’t know what to expect. I was afraid she would do what I couldn’t—end my wife’s suffering. Or worse, turn her! Of course, I didn’t know about the venom problem, that her venom couldn’t turn a human.” A wistful smile touched Leo’s lips.