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That logic of Eddie’s was hitting me pretty hard now. Profane? Yeah, I was supposed to be one of the devil’s disciples and that asshole Myrddin was concerned about me getting tubby or something. Here’s a clue. When someone tells you that you’re going to get this cool new title and it’s Profane, but you need to like be a puritan when it comes to everything, tell them to fuck off. Like look that shit up in the dictionary and then question authority.
“Probably. It was nutritionally balanced,” I said, taking a beautifully roasted chicken thigh onto my plate along with some of Eddie’s indulgent mac and cheese. “You know when I think about it, I get pissed. I was promised a life of evil. Shouldn’t evil include carbs?”
Kelsey shot me a grin. Her plate was already piled high because bestie could eat. “It should. And you should have had all kinds of weird sex stories to tell me.”
“Or not,” Casey said with a prim twist of his mouth. “Personally, I’m glad Myrddin didn’t take things to that level. She would feel terrible about it. And I wouldn’t feel happy. How would you feel if Trent and Gray had weird sex stories?”
Trent cleared his throat. “They were perfectly normal married sex stories, and she asks about them all the time.”
Kelsey looked over at Gray as though worried he would get offended.
Instead he laughed, the sound booming through the dining room. He was sitting at the head of the table and reached out to either side, taking Kelsey and Trent’s hands in his. “I think they were a little crazy and beautifully perverted, and we’ll tell our wife every single one. See, this is a perfect reason for a threesome. When one of you gets trapped on a different plane, there’s still a sexual outlet to be had.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s why my parents did it,” Lee offered. “And then naturally my mom wasn’t going to be left out of that, so she followed them.” Lee sat back, looking thoughtful. He’d come down alone with Dean, saying Evan needed some time and that Fenrir was pretty much sitting outside her door with Puff looking sad and shit. His words, not mine. “I sometimes wonder how it worked. Like how did Myrddin know the time difference between the planes? Is there a book or something?”
“I would like a copy because we never knew.” Trent had at least half a chicken and what looked like a whole meatloaf in front of him, and Eddie kept bringing more.
I took a bite of the mac and cheese, the taste filling me with comfort.
Casey’s eyes closed and he sighed.
Eating was so much more fun with him. I might gain back all the weight I’d lost on Myrddin’s starvation plan and then some because I was pretty sure there was a chocolate cake in my future. And a bold Cab. Goddess, I’d missed my wine time. And margaritas.
“It didn’t work like that.” Dean was paler than normal but seemed solid for a guy who’d effectively been in a coma for a couple of days. “The plane Kelsey and I were on actually moves only a bit faster than this one. It’s connected to the plane I grew up on. I was born about a year after Lee and Rhys, and yet we’re roughly the same age.”
I didn’t understand much about how the spell had worked, though I was fairly certain Myrddin had used some of my magic to power it. There were a lot of murky memories resurfacing. I thought they might for a long time. My vampire was probably going to have to deal with a lot of bad dreams from my side of our bed. “They didn’t cross time, did they? They were caught in a stasis spell. A spell that kept them trapped for twelve years.”
“Why not longer? Why not simply kill them?” Casey asked.
“Because Christine hid the painting,” Kelsey replied around a mouthful of hot wing. Eddie had brought her extra hot sauce, and she seemed to be loving it.
The word around the Coven House had been that Myrddin himself had hidden the painting. I’m sure he’d spread that rumor because he hadn’t wanted anyone to know he’d been played. There were others who’d thought somehow Harry Wharton had hidden it before he’d died.
Trent nodded. “I don’t know how she knew to hide the painting, but she likely saved everyone. Myrddin might not have been able to destroy the painting given its unique nature, but he could have put it somewhere else, somewhere dangerous. Somewhere they never come back from.”
He could have put it on the Hell plane and allowed the royals to walk out into an army of demons. Or banished it to a plane where they would surely have been killed. Instead, it had been sitting in the Coven House, waiting to bring them back to Dallas.
Kelsey shook her head. “No. I would always have found you. But I do have questions since Liv seems to know more than anyone else has. Why twelve years?”
“That’s all the power the spell had,” I explained, and felt my gut tighten. “Kelsey, I think he used my power. I vaguely remember being in the same room with the painting, and Myrddin told me he was doing some kind of energy exchange therapy to help me get my magic back. But I always felt more drained and less myself afterward. I was weak for a long time. I thought it was what the witches had done to me in Wyoming, but now I think I was healing from that and he did more damage.”
Dean blew out a long breath. “That was a lot of magic to have lasted twelve years. But yes, it would have been incredibly draining, which is why he didn’t use his own. My bio dad is kind of an asshole.”
“I’m sorry.” I felt like I needed to say the words. “I really do believe that’s what happened, and I’m sorry it was my magic that trapped you. A stasis spell would mean you were technically in the Cove…” I needed to start calling things by their proper names and not the ones that had been washed into my brain. “What I’m trying to say is you were in Ether all those twelve years, but you were trapped in a stasis spell that meant you were inside the painting and unable to move forward until the magic wore off. Christine must have worked some real protection spells to keep you safe. She likely didn’t even know she was doing it.”
“She thought she was protecting the painting. She knew it was the key to one day bringing you all home,” Lee said. “Grandma Chris was a hero.”
“She was.” Kelsey leaned over to pat his hand. “She saved us all.” Then she turned my way with that look on her face that told me she had some questions. “So I was in Ether?”
“Yes.” She’d been there because the painting had been there. The minute she’d stepped through the door, the stasis spell had trapped her.
“For twelve years,” she said slowly, as though trying to make those words make sense.
I knew exactly where she was going. My bestie would be upset by losing twelve years, but she always thought with one part of her body. “You were in stasis. You did not need a sandwich.”
“Twelve years.” Kelsey slapped the table lightly. “I assure you I needed a sandwich. Eddie, I need more wings. I got twelve years to make up for.”
She was insane, and I loved her. I sat there watching her knowing that what I should be feeling was love for her. I wanted to feel that again because Kelsey had always been one of the safest spaces I had ever…
