House women.
Cari, at least, was like him and had locked herself in her office. He hadn’t seen her in two days, though he’d tried to catch her more than once. Thoughts of Fletcher were consuming him, making Webb’s request more pressing. He was going to have to create an opportunity for himself. It was all Cari’s fault; she shouldn’t be this trusting. Her father should’ve taught her better.
So be it. He’d put it off long enough.
He didn’t trust the empty hallway. The naked lady statue followed him with her empty eyes. He went down the stairs, softly, as only a parent can. Across the main foyer. He knocked when he got to Cari’s office, identified himself through the wood—it had been embued with magic, a good precaution, though that wouldn’t keep him out—and then he entered when the lock released.
The change in her was startling.
She looked exhausted, gray, the antithesis of the flighty birds that were her sisters, and yet still more deeply beautiful than either. There was something substantive about Cari, but he was still trying to figure out what she was made of that was so compelling—maybe her sense of duty, or maybe her absolute loyalty to her House. And she was powerful, maybe too much so.
Although this morning he couldn’t feel the churn of Shadow that Cari kept bottled up inside. Not good. Mages needed Shadow; where was hers? She looked thinner, too, which was strange after so short a time. The lack of Shadow was costing her body.
Huge house, full of people . . . Who was supposed to be taking care of her? She couldn’t do everything on her own, although the Cari he remembered would try.
Mason noted that Cari covered the book she was reading with her hand. A loop of script was visible though—a journal?—so the contents had to be personal.
A soft shuffle behind him brought his attention quickly around. A stray always knew who was at his back, though he could have guessed: either the stepmother, with a knife rushing toward his spine, or one of the sisters, to torture him with innuendo.
The sisters. Perfect.
Mason turned to the head of Dolan House. “I want it known that I have made no advances and refused all of theirs.”
Cari smiled, humor sparking in her wide eyes, still so lovely, even when tired. “They’re just messing with you.”
“. . . haven’t even begun to mess with him . . .” The one with the red-black hair sighed under her breath.
Mason raised his eyebrows at Cari. See? Liv’s family had tried to kill him. He wasn’t risking a repeat without at least committing the crime first. And these girls didn’t tempt him.
“They’re scared and bored and don’t mean anything by it,” Cari explained. “Do I really have to defend your virtue?”
“I don’t have any virtue,” he told her. “Never did.” Virtue was too much like good-breeding; it was hoarded and parceled out to the deserving. He had nothing to hoard, and had never been deserving, least of all now, when he planned to steal from her. “I just don’t want any misunderstanding.”
Cari glanced back and forth between her sisters. “Cut it out.”
Stacia pouted. Zel made a pft sound.
They didn’t seem to be taking Cari’s request seriously.
Mason sensed magic gathering fast within Cari, too fast, frightening, like storm clouds rolling into sudden potent and electric density.
“You will leave him alone.” Her voice was filled with command, underscored by an implicit threat disproportionate to the issue. It was disproportionate if the sisters were, in fact, just messing with him. Appropriate, however, if they really wanted to tangle with the stray who’d already ruined one mage woman.
Her sisters sobered, their postures changing instantly. Who knew they could be normal?
“Sorry, Cari,” Stacia said. “I didn’t mean to stress you out.”
Zel had gone tentative too. “Can I help with anything? Get you something to eat?”
So they were at least trying to take care of her. They needed to try harder.
The concentration of magic slowly disassembled, as if Cari were swallowing it. She looked down at the books and papers on her desk. “I just need peace and quiet.”
“But if you’d let someone help . . .” Zel argued.
Maybe they were trying harder.
Cari’s face was still angled down, but the black of her irises shifted up to look at Zel. Cari was the picture of mage menace: isolated, besieged, not able to trust anyone who didn’t share her blood. And her stepsisters did not.
Mason’s instincts said, Danger. This was why she’d been left alone.
“You can’t help me.” Cari’s body had a feminine frame, but somehow she dominated her father’s big chair. But Mason didn’t trust it. He knew Cari, and she’d seemed off from the first moment he’d arrived.
Zel’s face reddened. She nodded, her mouth going into a white line. “I’d do anything for you, ya know.”
Stacia put her hand on Zel’s arm to pull her back. “Just give her some space. She’ll figure whatever it is out. Cari can do anything.”
No answer from Cari. Just that dark glare.
Mason found himself unwillingly liking her sisters. But they were idle, and that was a mistake on Cari’s part. He’d learned that lesson every single time Fletcher got bored.
Stacia and Zel retreated from the office, but Mason was staying. He shut the door, then met Cari’s blackened gaze with his own. Dead-on. “What’s wrong with you?”
He couldn’t help the way the air snapped between them, nor could he quell the impulse that he’d find out more if he were touching her. If there was any Dolan woman he was interested in, she sat before him. And she was utterly untouchable.
“I have work to do.” She didn’t look at her spread of papers and books, and she didn’t have to in order to make her point.
“I can sense concentrations of Shadow.” Mason cast his eyes over her messy desk. “You feel different than you did yesterday. You feel weak.”
She flinched as if stung. No mage liked to be called weak, but her instinctive reaction confirmed that she was beyond her strength. It was strange to speak to her like this—he’d have kept his distance with someone who was merely a business associate, but Cari was more than that. There’d been something between them once, and damn if it still wasn’t there, tugging at his gut.
“Are you ill? What’s going on with your Shadow?”
She smiled, mean. “I could ask you the same question.”
Mason frowned. “Nothing’s wrong with me.” Nothing that distance from here, from her, returning to his home, and playing with his kid couldn’t cure.
“Your Shadow isn’t right either. I can’t find your umbra when I look.” She pulled back to turn a page, scanning down the text. “So you’re hiding something, yourself really, from me. You must be very strong to hide like you do, when it is my House’s purview to see.”
His umbra, or lack thereof, was none of her business, so he didn’t answer her observation, and went back to his own. “You’re in trouble. You should let your sisters help you with your work.” It was honest advice, intended to help.
Wasn’t she supposed to be involved with Erom Vauclain? Where the hell was he? Must have just been gossip, or the relationship was over. What kind of a man would leave her to deal with her nightmare alone? What kind of a man would leave Cari at all? But then, thinking of Erom, she was probably better off.
“My stepsisters’ talents skew toward beauty and attraction. I’m surprised that you haven’t enjoyed their attention.” She gripped the book, pulled it close to her.
“I’m not interested.” Among her skewed papers he spotted the word membrane. Cool logo. “They could clean up your desk, for one.”