Once I heard his footsteps receding up the stairs, I turned back to my wife and stated in a flat tone, “You aren’t welcome here, Miranda.”
“Of course I am. I was invited.”
“Bullshit.”
“You really should not be so rude.”
“Coming from you that means pretty much nothing.”
She smiled. “Come now. Is that really a proper way to express your love for me?”
“Leave now, or I’ll make you leave.”
“I was invited,” she told me again.
“By who?”
She made a show of visually inspecting herself for a moment before saying, “Your wife, of course.”
“I know better than that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you only think you do.”
“Then why was Felicity crying out for help?”
“Giving in to one’s desires can be disconcerting at first. But, she will get used to it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“She will. Annalise did.”
“We both know you’re lying. Felicity never invited you here. You invited yourself.”
She shrugged. “Does it really matter? She is mine now.”
“Perhaps you only think she is.”
She let out a small laugh that sent icy fingers along my spine. “You are very quick, little man. Touche.”
“What did you do with the cloves and the blood, Miranda?”
“Is it not obvious?”
“The effects, yes. But, what did you do?”
“It is a secret.”
“What’s wrong? Are you afraid I might be able to work stronger magick than you?”
“No.”
“Then why not just tell me?”
“I have a better idea. Maybe you should beg me to tell you.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Even to save your wife?”
“You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t trust you.”
“Quick and bright. No wonder you love me.”
“This game is over. It’s time for you to leave. I’m not going to tell you again.”
“Not just yet.”
I didn’t respond. Instead I simply turned and started toward the stairs.
Ben reached out and grabbed my arm. “Wher’re ya’ goin’?”
I shot a glance back at Felicity then turned to face him. “I’m sure our guest is thirsty,” I said. “I thought I’d go get her a big glass of salt water so she can be on her way. You’d like that, right, Miranda?”
“You do not… want… to do… that,” she interjected with an odd faltering in her voice.
The hesitation seemed uncharacteristic based on my previous encounters with this Lwa, but I was certainly no expert in the field, so I wasn’t sure what to make of it. For all I knew, it was some sort of trick.
I snapped back at her, “Then leave and I won’t have to.”
“I… I am…” she started, the hesitation growing worse. “I am not… going… to do… that… just yet.”
She appeared to be struggling with something unseen. Not just the words but also something on the order of an outside influence. Her expression changed between each syllable, and her eyes would go from a cold stare to a vacant wandering each time. I started to wonder if my wife was fighting back. I could only hope that she was.
“Then you don’t leave me any choice,” I said.
I wasn’t going to take any chances. Whether Felicity was locked in some manner of ethereal tug of war or not, she needed help. I started toward the stairs again.
“It… will not…” she said then suddenly halted.
“What? Won’t work?” I called back to her. “It did before, and I’m betting it will again.”
I hadn’t gone any more than five paces when a pitiful sob hit my ears. I turned back out of a confused sense of curiosity and saw tears streaming down my wife’s cheeks.
“I’m not playing this game, Miranda,” I spat before turning and starting away once more just for good measure. As I said, I didn’t trust her.
“Rowan… Help me…” she wailed.
This time I stopped dead in my tracks. The voice calling my name held every bit of the Celtic lilt that identified Felicity and not even the barest hint of the Southern accent so prevalent in the Lwa’s manifestation.
“Row?” Ben breathed, shifting his gaze back and forth between the two of us.
I turned and stepped back toward her. “Felicity?”
“Help me…” she moaned, leaning her body against the vertical support as if she was completely spent.
“Give me the key,” I said to Ben.
“What?”
“Give me the goddamned key to the handcuffs!” I demanded again.
He dug in his pocket and fished out a key ring then shuffled through it before handing it to me with one pinched between his fingers. “Try this one. Those aren’t our cuffs so I dunno if it’ll fit.”
“You didn’t cuff her?” I asked, taking the keys and starting toward Felicity.
“She was like that when I got down here, Row,” he replied then asked, “Are you sure about this?”
“I don’t know if I’m sure about anything anymore, Ben,” I said.
I knelt next to my wife and slipped the key into one of the handcuffs. From this angle, I could see in through the door to her office, and I noticed a purple overnight bag sitting on her desk. It was the same one that had once been seized as evidence when she had been charged with Annalise’s crimes, simply because it was a repository of Felicity’s “toys” from when she had been directly involved in the BDSM community well before we had ever met. I hadn’t seen it since the last time Miranda had made her presence known through my wife. Obviously, she had tucked it away down here.
Things began to gel inside my pounding skull. One of the last times a possession had occurred, Felicity had tried to kill me and had almost succeeded. She must have sensed this one coming on and decided to make sure that couldn’t happen again.
I twisted the key and it unlatched the restraint. I carefully opened it and slipped the metal circlet from my wife’s bruised and scraped wrist and then undid the other. Sitting down on the floor, I gathered her up into my arms and held her.
After a moment of stroking her hair as I slowly rocked, I looked up at Ben and Constance and asked, “Would one of you please go get me a glass of salt water before that bitch comes back?”
“I’ll get it,” Constance offered as she turned toward the stairwell.
“Aspirin, too,” I added. “Just bring the whole damn bottle.”
CHAPTER 40:
“Rowan, I’m fine,” Felicity stressed for the third time as she set about rearranging a stack of clothes she had just placed into her overnight bag.
On the surface, the habitual manner in which she placed, removed, and then replaced items into the bag in a bid to defy the laws of physics would normally lead me to believe her comment was true. But, the image of her tear-streaked face was still playing back inside my head, with her desperately pleading whimper as the background score. If I wasn’t over it yet, I didn’t know how she possibly could be.
“Fine?” I replied. “Funny, you weren’t fine an hour ago.”
“Of course I wasn’t,” she countered without looking up. “But, like you said, that was an hour ago. Time heals, doesn’t it then?”
Her voice was confident, but her normal Celtic lilt had given way to a much heavier brogue, which wasn’t at all surprising. She had to be just as exhausted as the rest of us, probably more so, and that’s when her accent was at its thickest.
“I think they were talking about a little more time than an hour.”
“I’m a fast healer.”
“Uh-huh… Sure… You know, the last time this happened you checked yourself into a psych ward, or have you forgotten that?”
“The last time this happened I was scared.”
“You seemed pretty damn scared to me a little while ago.”
“I was,” she said with a curt nod. “But, now I’m not. Now I’m just pissed off.”
I knew she wasn’t just saying that for effect. She meant it. Any sense of fragility that had been coming from my wife in the past weeks was completely gone, replaced in total by a mix of anger and determination. This new emotion burned so brightly behind her eyes that it defied any description I could muster. In a very real sense, her present attitude frightened me almost as much as everything else that had happened.