Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(5)

“Oh, Cady. Not again.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said, my voice muffled inside my shirt. My eyes brimmed with prickly tears.

Lon offered me a waded up paper napkin from his coat pocket. “I meant the nosebleeds. Of course you didn’t mean to—”

Kill the second most powerful person in the Hellfire Club? I thought back to him in response.

“Just because he was Number Two doesn’t mean he was second in charge,” Lon said. “You know that. He just got the second slot when my father died. Dumb luck.”

Dumb luck or not, Merrimoth had been a fixture in the club for twenty years. Dare wasn’t going to be happy. If I hadn’t bound him . . .

“He might’ve broken his neck instead of his back. He was seventy-two, Cady, not seventeen.”

He was in good shape.

“I’m not sure if a cat with nine lives would’ve survived a fall from that height. Damn sure thought I was a goner until you saved me. What the hell kind of spell was that?”

It wasn’t a spell, exactly. I just wanted to stop you from falling and it happened.

Lon’s eyes tightened into slits. “No spell?”

I shook my head.

“That’s —”

Scary as shit?

“Amazing.”

A slow, salt-tinged wind blew rain beneath the stilted house. Lon pulled his coat closed and began fastening a row of oversized buttons. His next question was spoken in a low, quiet voice. “Why were you thinking about your mother?”

Ugh. Trying to control my thoughts when he was transmutated was impossible. It took me a few moments to answer. I saw an image of her, or something. Over there, I said internally, and nodded my head to my left.

Lon glanced at the sand. A flat patch of evening primrose grew around the stilt where I’d seen her standing. His brow knitted as he dug around inside my thoughts. “She looked solid but disappeared when you dropped the moon magick.”

It was probably nothing. Just a memory. I tried to push her image out of my head and failed. Maybe my brain’s broken. I don’t know why I’d be thinking of her. She can’t be alive. That albino demon took her— She just can’t, Lon. She can’t, I repeated, as if saying it made it true.

“You’re right, she can’t,” Lon agreed, but the way his eyes drifted made me wonder if he was lying to make me feel better. And though he surely heard me thinking this, he dropped the subject and shifted down to his human form. Horns spiraled and disappeared, fiery halo receded to his usual gold-speckled green, and our telepathic connection was severed.

After my nosebleed slowed, we made our way to the front of Merrimoth’s house and waited for Dare under a wide porch bordered by a grove of Monterey cypress trees. The rain ended as two SUVs finally arrived. A few bulky Earthbounds exited the first vehicle—people on Dare’s security team—then, from the second car, Dare himself.

Dressed in a tuxedo, the elderly Hellfire leader shoved fisted hands inside his coat pockets as he marched up the driveway. A green halo trailed as he nodded his bald head in greeting. Dare was easily the most powerful Earthbound in the area, not to mention the wealthiest. He owned a successful energy company, was invested in half the businesses in La Sirena, and put the mayor in office. Forty-some years ago, he started the Hellfire Club with Lon’s father. After the senior Butler died, Dare became Lon’s de facto father figure.

When Lon and I started dating, Dare did some digging into my background and discovered my true identity. He knew my most dangerous secret: that Arcadia Bell was just an alias. No one else but Lon and a few people in my former magical order knew that I was Sélène Duval, daughter of the Black Lodge Slayers. If he chose, Dare could use that information to ruin the independent life I’d struggled to build as Arcadia. And that’s how I ended up working two jobs: bartending at Tambuku Tiki Lounge, and being on-call for Hellfire magical work.

Dare stopped in front of us, a grave look on his face. “Show me.”

“Back here,” Lon said.

Dare signaled his men to follow and we hiked around the house to the beach. Lon pointed to the rock where Merrimoth’s broken body lay, now just a dark shape being battered by the surf. Dare requested a flashlight from one of his men and shined it over the outcropping. He made a despondent noise when the beam found its mark. We stepped closer, until the tide broke around our shoes. Dare held the flashlight on the body. “He wasn’t transmutated?” Dare asked. “You’re certain?”

“He wasn’t,” Lon said.

“No horns or fiery halo,” I agreed. “We didn’t see him every time he set the fires, but I watched him create ice right in front of me. No transmutation.”

Dare stared out at the sea for a moment. “Ever seen anything like that before?”

“Never.”

“I worry this isn’t an isolated case.”

Lon perked up. “Why?”

“Have you been paying attention to the news back in Morella? The robberies?” Dare swept a palm over his bald head. “A glut of them over the last couple of weeks. Home invasions. Burglaries. Stick-ups.”

“Not that unusual around the holidays,” I argued. “People get desperate.”

“This is different. Reporters haven’t noticed, but they will. The robberies are all being committed by Earthbounds.”