Wolves at the Door Read online

  At that moment, Graham pulled into the parking lot in a rental car. Although he drove a BMW back home, he had gone for the bargain compact here. He was frugal, but I had almost forgotten how much of a feast for the eyes he was. Billie stopped yelling at me just to drink in the sight of him as his long legs swung out of the car and then he gave his hair a quick comb, carelessly, before standing up and tilting down his shades.

  He was one of those guys who just seemed cool no matter what the hell he was doing.

  “Greetings,” he said, in his low, deceptively polite voice that let you know in an intuitive way that he was a good kisser. “Are you the settlement officer?”

  “No.” Billie’s arms were still crossed tight.

  “She is a witch,” I said through my teeth, “who is offering more than us for the house. She just spoke to Mrs. Greenwood.”

  “Oh, is that so? You’re one of the other offers?”

  “I’m the other offer,” Billie said. “I ran the first couple out of town already. You two need to go back to where you came from. You don’t want to mess with my crew.”

  “Can I…look at the house first?” I was scrambling for ideas. Maybe we could get the treasure out. Unfortunately, I felt certain she knew there was a treasure in the house and it would be no easy task to get it past her.

  “No. I’m not messing around. Take your Habsburg chin back to New York.”

  I rubbed my face. “I do not have the Habsburg chin!” Oh god, I sounded like my mother.

  “You wouldn’t overpay for this house just to get revenge on me, would you? But I’ll overpay to get revenge on you.”

  Graham wrapped a hand around my elbow and led me away from Billie even as another car, a middle-aged lady sedan, pulled up and the woman I was sure had to be the settlement officer got out with a folder of paperwork.

  “Helena, tell me what’s going on, and quickly,” Graham said. “Did you do something to that girl?”

  “Why would you think I did something to her?”

  He scratched his own freshly shaved, perfectly regal jawline. “I don’t know. ’Habsburg chin’ is a very strange insult, the sort of thing you say to someone you know.”

  “We don’t have time. She’s buying our house.”

  “And we definitely don’t have enough money to beat her,” he said. “So what are our options?”

  I sighed.

  Chapter Three

  Graham

  “Royalty? That explains a lot about you,” I said, grinning at Helena in a way I hoped didn’t come off as lascivious. She certainly didn’t have a chin worth insulting. Her chin was pert, just like her nose and her boobs, and I was trying very hard not to think about how much I wanted to touch them, as I had not seen her in weeks.

  “I mean, barely,” she said with a sigh. “We left Europe hundreds of years ago, and it’s only on my mother’s side.”

  “So that’s why you were a bitch to her in high school.”

  “I didn’t want to be! I feel terrible about it. In fact, I wanted to be friends with her, but my ‘friends’—” She did air quotes. “Even my own sisters told me I needed to cut her from my social circle.”

  “I’m starting to imagine your school looked like a Jane Austen movie.”

  “You wouldn’t be far off, honestly. The skirts were just a little shorter. So the whole trauma followed me home over the holidays too. Just one of many reasons I am working for myself now, doing a job that my parents would never approve of.”

  “I think I like you even more now.” I watched Billie moving in on the settlement officer. “But we definitely have a problem. Let me talk to her. You wait here.”

  “Ooh…uh…okay.” I detected jealousy in her darting eyes, and I relished it.

  She probably thought I was going to work my masculine wiles on her rival. It was tempting, but I had only known I was a demon for a month or so. Before that, I thought I just had a higher calling to help people.

  I was within striking distance of my life’s dream to win a national political office, moving from the Pennsylvania state house to the House of Representatives, when Helena came into my life like a bomb, destroying everything I knew. Politics came natural to demons because we fed on the admiration of humans, and the votes came naturally to me because I was an incubus and my constituents literally couldn’t resist me.

  I felt like I was cheating. I wasn’t getting votes because of anything I’d done. I was getting them because I was a demon. I’d had no idea.

  And in my district, my opponent was actually a pretty decent guy, a veteran who owned a locally beloved restaurant.

  Two weeks before the election, my campaign was falling apart. Calls from my campaign manager were going ignored. I skipped out on two fundraisers. I was failing everyone who believed in me.

  One thing I did know how to do thanks to my years in politics was to smooth things over. “Hi, Billie,” I said, approaching her before she could walk into the offices as the settlement officer nodded at her like, whenever you’re ready. “It seems we all got off on the wrong foot. I’m Graham Capello. Greenwood Manor was the home of my grandfather’s dear friend Deveraux, and I made an offer on it because I really want to see it restored.” This was a lie, and I hoped she couldn’t tell.

  “Graham Capello…” Billie looked me over with suspicion and intrigue. Despite her aggression toward Helena, I got the feeling she had a caramel-soft core. She was a girl who had taken knocks all her life by the sound of it, but she had innocence in her eyes. Men intimidated her, I thought. She stayed away, hiding behind red curls and an attitude that was really just a front. “You’re…you’re some kind of demon, aren’t you?”

  “I come to you in the spirit of fair business,” I said, hoping not to get into that.

  She bared her small teeth like a cornered animal, her face turning red. “An incubus, aren’t you? I ain’t messing with an incubus!” She was getting flustered, bringing out a thicker accent. “Helena sent you over here to seduce me into giving up the house? No way. I’m onto your deal. No incubus is worming his way into my pants.”

  “I swear I have no interest in worming my way anywhere. It’s Helena…I care about.” I said it too soft for Helena to hear. “But she hasn’t let me worm my way into her pants either. I wanted to tell you a little bit about Helena, because I met her when she bought my grandfather’s house. He was the last of my family, and it was hard to say goodbye to all those memories. The house kept luring me back, and when it did, I saw Helena busting her ass trying to make it beautiful. She loved the house. She worked hard. And she did a lot of it all on her own. She told me how she treated you in high school, but now I think her family treats her with disdain because this is what she does.”

  For a second, I thought I had her. She looked at Helena. She seemed anxious and cornered. “That’s a nice story, Mr. Capello,” she said. “I wish Helena luck. But if you think I’m giving up the house, I don’t know why I would.”

  “The house was in my family.”

  “Family? Family friend, by the sound of it. Blanche Greenwood is an old lady who deserves a fair price.”

  “It’s haunted by a ghost who is a family friend.”

  “Nearly every house that age is haunted. You’ve got to let the ghost move on.”

  I was losing patience, and took a deep breath before I did something rash, like the time I accidentally used magic to slam the brakes on Helena’s car. I could feel the temper simmering in me now. “The house is a mess,” I said. “I’ve seen it. And I’ve seen the comps. They’re not wizard houses, but—you don’t really want the house, do you?”

  Her breath was coming a little faster. “Back off.”

  “What do you want?” I pressed.

  My honorable intentions went right out the window. I could feel myself luring her in, using my magic to seize her trust before I’d earned it. I’d done this many times in my life without ever knowing what it was.

  Now I was starting to see. I thought I was good at pe
rsuading people to see my side, to win their hearts and minds. But I was just using magic.

  “I want…” She was struggling not to speak.

  I need this house. I have to have it. This is my family’s history. It’s too late to turn back now. Even if it means I have to shove this girl out of the way.

  “I want to destroy the council,” she choked.

  Then her eyes widened in terror. I had forced the words from her mouth, and she looked at me like no one had ever looked at me. Like I was a villain, a man to be feared. Sweat broke out on her brow. She covered her mouth.

  “Please—” She was scrambling for something else she could say, something to save her from what she feared might come next. Maybe she thought I would tell Helena and Helena would tell the wizard councils, but I was also in over my head here. I hardly knew what the wizard councils did or what power they had.

  The spell was broken and I took a step back. I forced her to speak.

  Who was I becoming?

  “Why?” I asked. The rush of magic left me. I was just asking her like a normal person now.

  “Why are you working with an Ethereal witch like her?” Billie gasped out. “I can’t trust her. I don’t trust any of them, the witches who hold the power in this world. They play nice when it’s convenient. But when life gets hard, they protect each other. Not a nobody witch like me, and not a demon like you. I don’t know what your deal is, but I don’t trust her, and I sure don’t trust you either,” Billie said, and then she turned away from me and rushed into the settlement office.

  I heard Helena come charging up to me. She flung out her arms. “Is she going in there to buy our house?”

  “Yes. I could have stopped her, but I would have had to do something awful.”

  “Some good that was, then! Graham—we need that house!”

  “What could you have done without altering her thoughts? She’s determined. But she has her reasons, and—”

  “What are they?” Helena interrupted me. She was a woman on a mission, a woman who hated to lose.

  “I want to know all about the wizard council, and you can tell me on the way to the house. If we can’t win it fair and square, maybe we can find our treasure while she’s signing paperwork.”

  “The council is…the council,” Helena said.

  “Are they elected?”

  “Sort of. Yes. But only guild wizards get to vote. And there are barriers for getting into guilds. When people complain, the guild wizards just tell them they should stop complaining and put in the work to join a guild.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “You don’t look impressed.” She made a face. “Well, I’m not in a guild either. So I don’t vote. There have certainly been problems with the councils over the centuries, but they’ve kept order, and that isn’t always easy when magic is involved. It’s just…lately…”

  “Lay it on me.”

  She fussed with the vents in the rental car. It was definitely a warm day in the south. “I’m not sure if the guild has changed, or if we’ve changed, but I think I told you that they’re pretty old-school, 19th century, kinda sexist.”

  “Yes, you may have mentioned it a time or two,” I said dryly.

  She laughed. “Well, I am not a fan. They find ways to punish women who try to reach for the sort of power men have. It’s not that different from normal human life, but it’s set back a few decades. And my brother has been barred from Etherium. That just pisses me off. He’s a good guy and there’s no reason for it and sometimes—” She looked out the window as a few strip malls passed by our view. “Sometimes it makes me want to give up Ethereal magic myself.”

  “And become a dark wizard like my grandfather? Why not?” I felt unmoored in the world, as if I was not in another state but on another planet. I just forced a girl to speak against her will. My grandfather was a dark wizard; I’m a demon…so am I doomed to walk a dark path? What does that even mean?

  “Sinistral is dangerous. Dark magic is powerful, but it also tends to have a higher cost. The Ethereal wizards would be my enemies. My own family…”

  “I see.”

  “I guess I’m a little cowardly at heart, because I’m afraid of getting kicked out like Harris was. He became a Wyrd warlock, but Wyrd is scary too, because it’s the weakest realm and…being an Ethereal witch from a good family is just safe.” She smashed the heel of her palm into her forehead. “See, this is why I was a bitch to Billie in high school. It was safer to stick with the other rich witches, and I hurt her to save my ass. Now I can hardly look her in the eye, and I’m going to rob her house?”

  “I guess we could just go home,” I said, knowing she would never choose that option.

  She was quiet, twisting her hair like she could spin the strands into gold.

  We both had our reasons. She wanted to help Byron. I wanted to find out what my grandfather had been up to.

  Our reasons were slightly at odds. She wanted to help Byron. I wanted her.

  “No. We’re doing this,” she said.

  Chapter Four

  Helena

  I have to make it quick, I thought, as Graham drove down a small country road and I knew we must be getting close. If this was anything like the last house, Byron couldn’t help me. I would have to find the map hidden inside Greenwood House on my own.

  This was certainly the craziest thing I’d ever done, considering I still didn’t know what the maps would do once we collected them. We had one, which I carried with me on the plane, along with the spell books that told the story of the treasure—in a lost magical trade language called Cyprium. Stupid lost languages. So inconvenient.

  Despite some words similar to Middle English and other magical tongues, I had made little progress in translating them. Together, the three maps, each shaped like a triangle of stone—formed “Pandora’s Box”. I assumed Pandora’s Box did something very destructive, and I had no idea what we would do with it once we put it together. I just knew that I had something incredibly powerful on my hands, something Byron desperately wanted me to find.

  As we turned the bend, a house came into view behind some clusters of trees.

  “There it is,” Graham said.

  “Oh…shit.”

  He hardly had to tell me that this was Greenwood Manor. The road led right to it, circling its impressive facade, but otherwise leading nowhere but here.

  The manor was a huge, crumbling structure with white columns supporting an expansive porch and curving exterior stairs leading up to an equally large balcony, while the roof sloped dramatically from a widow’s walk flanked by two small dormer windows. All of it was frilled with lacy trim that showed a heavy French influence. Normally I saw this style of houses with the classical columns painted white.

  If this house could speak, it would tell me it was no basic bitch. The house was pink, with gold window frames and a regal blue in the trim work. It was charming in the way that an old house can pull off some bold ideas, but I had a dim thought in my mind that it was also verging on tacky.

  The house was fronted by a garden of what had once been orderly, boxy hedges. They were overgrown now, of course. It was surrounded by out buildings. The servants had their own humbler dwelling, that was still larger than many houses I had flipped in the past. The servant house was falling into complete ruin, the porches sagging, a hole in the roof.

  Greenwood Manor itself was like a washed up old Hollywood actress. All that crazy pink paint was peeling. The trim was rotting in spots. The only bright side was that it looked structurally sound from here. Old houses were built out of strong stuff; they could take more punishment than you might think at first as long as the owners kept the roof in good repair and didn’t let any pests take hold.

  “The roof looks okay,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s about all I can say about this place,” Graham said. “I peeked in the windows earlier.”

  I had to admit, I was a little speechless. Taking on a place like this was not a one-woman task,
no matter how determined the woman was.

  Now I was absolutely certain Billie bought it for other reasons.

  “Yeah, I can see your face slowly absorbing the experience.” Graham patted my shoulder. “Well, cheer up. At least you didn’t buy it.”

  “Yeah. Let’s hurry and get the thing.”

  I hopped out of the car and I could tell the air was a little cooler here than in the city, almost eerily so. The air was swampy compared to Pennsylvania, but luckily it was autumn. No way that house had air conditioning. Southern architecture only went so far with the high ceilings and breezeways to beat the heat.

  We walked up a few steps to the doors, double doors with a fan pattern set in the wood that reminded me of a palmetto leaf.

  “Byron!” I called. “We’re here! Are you able to let us in?”

  No answer. Graham looked out over the garden. The porch was elevated enough to give a broad view of the maze-like hedge pattern. “Quiet out here,” he said, and his hand moved to the small of my back, a light but protective touch. He sensed the magic here. Having someone around who wanted to protect me was unexpected and nice.

  “Very quiet…” I didn’t want to think about why. When you were dealing with magic, quiet and cool were not what you wanted. Quiet meant the animals had cleared out. Ghosts tended to cool things down, but since Byron wasn’t answering…well, there were other types of spirits. I was definitely on my guard as I took out my wand to tap the door handle and try the lock.

  As soon as the wooden tip met the brass knob, a horrific screech emerged and I jumped back with a shriek of surprise.

  Two rather twisted-looking spirits poured out of the keyhole, taking on form as they escaped. Both grew to size of men, and they floated, still letting out horrible endless screeches. They had the substance of multiple layers of cobwebs and faces that were barely a suggestion of eyes, nose and mouth. One of them swept toward me and the other toward Graham.

  “Graham!” I cried. Graham wasn’t ready for this kind of attack.