Maia's Magickal Mates [The Double R 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (8 page)

Her seventy years remained evident in the long, wavy, silver-gold hair on her head and the lines on her face. Despite her advanced years and widowhood, however, she lived an active life, still riding as often as she could, working alongside the cowboys she employed at her ranch, and just generally living up to her surname to the fullest.

Prentice opened the dossier and flipped through the pages, rereading some sections and reacquainting himself with Mrs. Lively on paper.

He actually admired what she had done with her life and how she lived, even if he didn’t exactly approve of the location where she had settled.

Oklahoma. Ugh, gag him with a spoon now.

He hated the country. It made his skin itch. Maybe it was all the trees and grass or all the
dust,
but Prentice doubted it. More like being surrounded by all the Great Plains, Bible Belt moral fiber and goodness that had hives breaking out on his body even as he sat in the relative security of his air-conditioned rental.

Give him his condo in LA and trips to those other urban, Babylonian dens of corruption and vice in Las Vegas and New York, where he regularly worked and played.

Nevertheless, he found himself in the Sooner State surrounded by grass, trees, cows, and horses for as far as the eye could see. Not even the rental’s tinted windows could keep out all the nature and wholesomeness. He would have to make sure he watched where he stepped once he got out of the car to give Mrs. Lively a visit, for sure.

Prentice took a deep breath as he prepared himself to meet the lady face-to-face. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why he remained nervous. She was just an old woman. Even if she was gifted like her sister and brother-in-law, he felt certain he would prevail in a war of wills and powers. His gifts, after all, had been enhanced.

It wouldn’t hurt to enhance them a little more now, would it?

It had been far too long since his last fix, so to speak. He could do with another power boost to fill up his tank.

Prentice opened the glove compartment, inserted the dossier, and closed it back. Everything he needed to know had been committed to memory anyway. Now the moment of truth approached, when he’d see the woman with his own eyes.

He opened the driver’s-side door, glancing down at the dirt-and-gravel road before he placed the soles of his pricey Italian leather shoes on the ground and got out of the car. He closed the door behind him with one hand and slid a pair of expensive sunglasses down over his eyes with the other.

Even with the sunglasses on, the glare from the early-afternoon sun still forced him to squint as he made his way across the field from where he had parked his rental. He hated to squint, thought it an unforgivable sign of weakness.

Prentice crossed the road to the main house of The Lively Ranch fifty or so yards away from his car, counting himself lucky that he hadn’t stumbled onto any cow patties along the way.

Can you say so far so good?

Smiling at his own joke, he reached the front door of the house and buzzed the bell located on the jamb before reaching for the knob and turning it on a hunch.

The door was unlocked. What providence! He definitely wasn’t in LA anymore.

“Hello? Anyone home?” He pushed the door in even as he asked the question, glancing left then right without seeing anyone. He did, however, pick up thoughts coming from the general location of the kitchen straight ahead, confused that they remained indistinct to him.

At this distance he should be able to make out more clearly the thoughts of the house’s occupant, shouldn’t he? Was this haziness a side effect of taking another’s powers? Were his own abilities undergoing an additional transformation?

Prentice glanced at himself in the gilt-edged mirror hanging on a wall of the entry hall, took off his glasses, and slid them in the breast pocket of his designer suit jacket.

“You can come in, young man. I’ve been expecting you.”

Expecting him? So she was gifted. Unless she thought he was someone else she knew visiting from one of the many ranches and farms in the area.

Prentice crossed the cream-carpeted floor, only glancing at the wood-and-glass curio cabinet with all its knickknacks and trophies on display to his right—touches of domesticity and a life of modest achievements.

The smell of home-baked cookies wafted to him as he passed the unassuming but comfortably furnished dining area.

Jealousy knifed through him at the cozy and warm vibe of the house. He suddenly hated the boys who had grown up here among the smell of home-baked goods lovingly prepared by a mother figure eager to hear tales of their school day before everyone would finally settle down to dinner with the man of the house seated at the head of the table dispensing wise, fatherly advice.

The vivid image drove a nail into the coffin of his own austere and cool upbringing, memories of his negligent parents and his lonely, torturous childhood almost overwhelming him.

Prentice shook off the recollections. No time for nostalgia.

He’d come a long way, done very well for himself after all, in spite of his mother and father and his inauspicious beginnings.

He had been a preemie, born almost three months early, and had remained small throughout his childhood.

His Neanderthal, homophobic schoolmates had taken his slight stature and fine features as shortcomings, dubbing him too pretty to be a boy and making fun of his soft, curly blond hair. He’d invariably been taunted and teased, called a fag and a sissy on a regular basis by the popular, larger boys and jocks in school.

These schoolmates had all paid for disrespecting him, every last one of them, from the football players who’d tripped him in the halls on a regular basis to the one girl who’d dared reject his brave Valentine’s Day overture in the seventh grade.

“Well, I must say you’re not what I expected.”

Prentice came out of his self-induced stupor to stare at the woman wiping her hands on the front of her country floral apron as she returned his look.

The chocolate chip cookies she’d just pulled out of the oven cooled in a pan on top of the cherrywood island, and his mouth actually watered at the smell of the confections. He had to beat down another wave of envy at his reaction.

Prentice cleared his throat. “What, exactly, were you expecting?”

She frowned, tilting her head to one side as she looked at him.

He had to fight not to fidget beneath her observation, telling himself he remained in the superior position and had the upper hand. He could, after all, read her mind, a talent he had yet to put to good, serious use and an oversight he intended to correct immediately.

Prentice didn’t even bother to conceal his efforts, just went in and sifted her memories and thoughts.

She jerked back, lifting her head as she stared at him. “Ah, so you do have the gift.”

“You doubted it?” he asked, trying not to reveal his surprise that she’d felt what he’d done. In fact, he got the decided impression that she blocked some of her thoughts from him. He’d have to put a stop to that.

“I didn’t doubt your power. I’d just hoped that you used it in a more ethical and positive manner. But I see that you don’t.”

“Whose ethics are we talking about?”

Aura Lively shook her head at him, clucking her tongue, and he felt like a poor-performing student about to be scolded by his disappointed teacher.

He hated how this old woman put him on the defensive and made him feel like a kid.

“And it harm none, do what ye will,” she quoted.

“Ah, the Wiccan Rede. Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

“Yet you chose to ignore it.”

“I follow my own path. There’s a difference.”

“Black Magick is not a path. It is a perversion.”

He grinned. He’d been accused of worse by his parents right before he’d killed them.

Prentice reminded himself now that they’d had it coming, just like his schoolmates. They had wronged him, and he had every right to make them pay, to defend himself from harm and pain. He also had every right to do what he saw fit to better his circumstances and the circumstances of his business and coven. He justified his actions with the philosophies the United States followed during its westward expansion in the nineteenth century.

This old woman would lead him to the vehicles that would help him expand his gifts and reach
his
manifest destiny whether she wanted to or not.

“Where are they?’ Prentice asked.

“Surely you don’t think I’m going to tell you after I’ve made every effort to cloak their location from you.”

“Cloak…?” No wonder the PI hadn’t been able to locate them. “A protection spell, Mrs. Lively? How clever.”

“Clever enough.”

“Not clever enough to protect yourself?”

She shrugged, a look of smug resignation on her face. “I am a Wiccan, not a pretender like you. I don’t fear death. I know that it’s not an end for me but a beginning.”

He reached out to her mind with his mental fingers, smiling as he obtained the recollections he sought. “And you want to be reunited with Brielle.”

“Your parents killed my sister and her husband. I’m not going to let you kill their boys.”

“My dear old woman, haven’t you figured out that you don’t have a choice?” He gave her a psychic slap.

Aura came up short with the shock of it, and he knew pain coursed through her brain. Her nose immediately started to bleed.

“It remains to be seen how strong you are at such an advanced age and whether you can withstand the force of a sustained attack. Your sister and brother-in-law certainly couldn’t.”

“I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

“You might want to get a paper towel for that before you drip all over those delicious chocolate chip cookies, and we wouldn’t want that.” Prentice took a step closer, exerting more pressure on her mind. He wrapped psychic fingers around her arteries, further mapping a path to her memory receptors until he found what he—

A telepathic door slammed down on his fingers just as he was about to extract the information he needed to find Thayne and Cade.

“You are one feisty, wily old woman.”

“I didn’t get to be this age on just my good looks.”

He released a full-bodied laugh, truly enchanted by this creature. “You are nothing if not entertaining, Mrs. Lively. It’s a pity I’m going to have to kill you.”

“More is the pity for you.”

He increased the pressure, squeezing her brain matter until blood gushed from her nose and splattered onto the spick-and-span tiled floor.

Aura stumbled against one of the barstools at the island, leaning on its iron back but unable to pull herself up into the seat to sit down. She held onto the barstool as she slid down to the floor in a heap, panting.

“Not quite so fast.” He eased the pressure just a little, searching for the information he needed, finding a chink in her mental armor. Ah, there it was! Someplace in Colorado.

Oh joy, another dust bowl town to visit. Would wonders never cease?

Not that he’d ever have to visit the place, of course. Not if he killed Aura right here and now. Her nephews would come running to pay their respects to their beloved aunt. They would come running right to him—problem solved.

“Aura, it’s been a pleas—” He froze. Something else reached him from her memories, something about a crystal pendant. Wonderful! He got an unexpected bonus.

Aura grabbed the hem of his pant leg in a surprisingly strong grip. “Please…don’t hurt…they’ve been through…enough…”

Prentice didn’t know whether she begged for her own life or her nephews’, not that it mattered anymore.

He pulled his leg out of her reach and compressed her brain tissue, siphoning off the last of her powers before he began turning her mind to mush.

This is your brain, Aura. This is your brain after you’ve displeased Prentice. Any questions?

Prentice smiled at his memory of the popular just-say-no-to-drugs PSA commercial and the vision of eggs frying in a pan like he now fried Aura’s brain.

A violent seizure shook the old woman’s body as she lay on the floor. She bled from her ears and eyes in addition to her nose now.

Prentice sensed her heart wildly pounding before it slowed and finally gave out beneath the strain of his manipulations.

He glanced down at her motionless body, almost feeling a pang of regret but mostly feeling that now-familiar ache of jealousy at the Malloy brothers’ luck to have had someone in their lives like the old lady who’d cared enough about them to die for them.

Were they even aware of her efforts, of her sacrifice?

What a sacrifice she’d made, too. She had put up a gallant fight. She had been a worthy adversary he felt honored to have gone up against.

He stepped over Aura’s body now to get to the tray of cookies on the island. He took off one of his driving gloves, picked up a cookie, and bit into the warm, moist confection. He closed his eyes and moaned, savoring the bittersweet, creamy flavors of butter, chocolate, cocoa, and sugar, wondering if Aura’s nephews would put up half as good a fight as she had.