We’d all seen what she had done to the heavily guarded building of Veritas.
No, I had to believe in our strength and their abilities, otherwise I would weaken the barrier. I said in a low voice to them, “She will not be able to enter.” A spark of power lit up deep within me.
“Calan, is that you?” Emma’s voice came through the door. It was her voice, but the inflection was all wrong. Her words were too silky in a blatant coax. “Baby, you need to let me in. This isn’t how one treats their wife.”
The ring on my left hand seemed to burn into my flesh. This was not the woman I married.
Krystan strode across the living room to the dining room and yanked Tristan out of his basinet. She grabbed an axe that was set against a corner of the room. In that moment, Krystan turned into the fiercest, most primal version of herself. Ready to do anything to protect her young. Travis grabbed his utility belt from the back of a dining chair, strapping it around his waist. By the time I pulled my broadsword, he’d acquired a cross bow.
“She’s not getting in,” I assured them, sending a stream of my magic to help fortify the ward. Ylang’s voice entered my mind, reminding me of my training.
A drop of a Chevalier’s power is more than an army’s worth. When fully in alignment with the light, the Chevalier is more powerful than an ocean.
If I anchored myself to a belief, I powered it. I used to believe Emma was my guiding star. Right now, I believed she would not enter this place no matter what. I sunk my thoughts into this one belief.
We stood there as Emma pleaded with us to let her in. Finally, she stopped talking through the door. “Give me the bird, and your baby won’t have to die.”
Snarp? Why did she need him? My stomach clenched. The creature out there wouldnotget in.
“Travis, if now was ever the time to flip to the winning side, now is the time. Afterall, you have a family to think of now. Let me in and I promise I won’t kill them.”
When I first met Travis, he might have fallen prey to her manipulations, but he squared off his stance, continuing to stare the door as if keeping his eyes on it would ensure it would stay in place. Good. The more we believed she could not get in, the more we fed the wards.
“Fine,” Emma said, sounding like she was pouting. “You won’t let me in? I’ll have to send someone out.”
Krystan, Travis, and I looked at each other, suspicion shining in our eyes.
“Can she control us from out there?” Travis asked.
“No, the ward is strong and taking over someone’s will takes a great deal of power,” I said. “I don’t see how she could do both.”
“You don’t seem sure,” Krystan said, giving me the stink eye.
“It’s hard to say what she is capable of.”
I almost tripped over my feet as the house shook under us. Krystan dropped the axe to hold Tristan closer to her. The house shook a second time, and Travis threw them under the doorway to the dining room while I got under the doorway to the hall, only a few feet from the front door. If the ceiling fell, we were in the safest spot, which still wasn’t saying much.
“Apparently she is capable of shaking our house to rubble,” Krystan yelled.
Another tremor threatened to make me lose my footing.
The rumblings in the ground subsided. “What did she mean by she could send someone out?” Travis asked.
Before I could respond, a movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. “Krystan, I feel now is the prudent time to explain why Emma and I moved out of your house.”
Tristan had started crying when the house began shaking and Krystan was trying to rock and coo him back into calm. “Seriously? Right now? I think it can wait until after—”
“It’s the dolls, Krystan. They were too creepy and it felt like we were being watched all the time. We decided to move out instead of telling you because we knew how much they meant to you since your grandmother picked them out.”
Another jerky motion on a shelf had me turning my head.
“They’re right, Krystan,” Travis said with an audible sigh of relief. “I know I said I was cool with however you wanted to deck the place out, but you’ve surpassed your gran. The dolls are out of control.”
Krystan’s head whipped back and forth between us and growled. “Okay, do you think you two could pick another time to rip on my home decorating skills? Because this isn’t the right time.”
Travis sounded as if he were on edge and on the verge of snapping. “I’m just saying Krys, they have a point. Not one room in this house is safe from those damn dolls.” Tristan was crying as though someone had cut off his foot. Grabbing the Ergo Baby Wrap that was on a nearby chair, Travis continued to speak in tense tone as he helped Krystan put on the wrap and strapped Tristan in so the baby was flush against her chest. Their motions were practiced and practically unconscious. “Even in the bathroom, you have all those miniatures lined up on a shelf. Honestly, I can’t even use the toilet in the morning under the dead eyed stare of those creepy minis. That’s why I take Tristan to a coffee shop every morning. Not because we need man to man bonding time, it’s because they have a big, clean, doll-free commode.”
Krystan took the axe back from Travis and settled one had against the baby’s back. “That’s why? Why couldn’t you man up and tell me? No, you only had the balls to say it after Calan confessed. And what the hell good is being a human lie detector if everyone has been successfully lying to me?”
