Chapter Forty-one
HARMONY had never moved as fast through the water as she did to get away from King. On the beach, she snatched her robe and put it on while she ran to the castle.
King called to her from a distance, but she didn’t look back. Let him crawl out of the water. He deserved to crawl.
“Fool.” When they were mak—yes, making love, or getting as close as she’d ever gotten—the idiot had lowered his wall long enough to taste passion, which terrified the starch out of him. So he backed off, the jerk. Not that she could read him like she used to, but she knew him better now, and he was running scared . . . on the inside.
Fine, go. Run till you’re alone and lonely. It won’t matter. You’ll always want me. And that wasn’t magick speaking; it was fact. He didn’t know it yet, but she, unfortunately, did.
After she dressed, she went to the kitchen, where everyone was eating a quiet supper—too quiet—except for Jake, who rattled on about the educational video he’d watched before his nap. His rendition of the playmate song not only broke the ice, it melted everyone at the table, especially King, who beamed with pride.
“Tell us about the bonfire,” Reggie said.
“Our ancestors built bonfires on midsummer’s eve to honor the light of fire, and we’ll build ours like theirs. Bonfires are rare these days because most people don’t have a private beach, so we’re lucky and grateful to King for lending us his. To help celebrate, after supper, anybody who wants can come with us to gather wood to burn. It’s part of the fun, but we take only dry branches off the ground. We never hurt a tree.”
After a heavily frosted brownie, Jake dragged Reggie to the door. “This is so much fun,” he said, though he hadn’t started yet, but he stopped to look beyond his mother. “Grampa? Hurry up. We gotta go get branches.”
“Grumpy Grampa,” Harmony said as he passed.
Within the hour, Harmony placed her branches on the growing pile and stood where she and King had escaped the parlor car, now back in the shed for Aiden to rebuild. Hard to believe, looking at King now, all hard and detached, that they’d been so close, in mind and heart, in this very spot.
She welcomed the joking revelers as they added branches to the pile. “My sisters and I have never had the opportunity to share this holiday with anyone,” she said, “and the camaraderie is wonderful. Thank you, Morgan. Aiden. Jake, that’s such an impressive bundle of wood, I’m gonna ask you to hold some protective blue balloons during the ritual tomorrow. You carried as much wood as a man just now.”
“I can carry balloons . . . but I’m only a boy, not a man.”
“Nearly three going on sixty, right?”
“No.” He giggled. “I’m not sixty. Grampa is sixty.”
King pulled the boy against his good leg. “I’m thirty-seven, you little terror. Can you say, ‘My grampa is young, and handsome, and thirty-seven’?”
“No.” Jake giggled and hid his face against King’s leg, until he peeked at Harmony.
She turned his little chin. “Repeat after me. My grampa is young, and dense, and thirty-seven.”
Jake nodded. “My grampa is young, and dense, and thirty-seven.”
King tickled him. “Her version, you remember?”
Reggie lifted her son so he could hug King, and she ruffled both their heads. “Dense the both of you,” she said. “Hey, Harmony, I understand dancing around a bonfire, but what’s with the dawn ritual?”
Harmony sat in the sand, and everyone but King did the same. “A midsummer ritual is perfect for protective magick,” Harmony said. “We’re hoping to cleanse, purify, bless, and protect the castle, replace its negative energy with positive, and send Gussie on her peaceful way. This is a sun holiday, so I’m asking the light of the sun to master Gussie’s darkness.”
Reggie didn’t look convinced. “Suppose Gussie goes nuts first? Couldn’t she send your altar flying before you start, like the mural scaffolding?”
“We’ve been cleansing the negativity in the castle, room by room, in preparation, so there should be enough positive energy for us to get started. And the ritual circle is a sacred place, so Gussie won’t be able to break in. We’ll wear protective garlands of herbs and flowers. A powerful herb against negativity is chase devil, known to you as Saint-John’s-wort.”
Harmony didn’t want to scare King with the belief that young women would find their significant others at midsummer festivals.
“Hey, Sis, I know this is serious stuff, but you forgot the best part.”
“Storm, I don’t think—”
“Get this, Reggie,” Storm said. “The moon at midsummer is called the honey moon. Unmarried women wearing herb garlands during the festivities expect to find lovers or husbands.”
“Cool,” Reggie said, but King stood more rigid, his free hand clenched, his eyes broody.
As if the sun matched his mood, dusk descended with Harmony’s hopes, and they all went inside.
King’s body language said he thought she was trying to trap him, though she knew he was more afraid of his own feelings.
Didn’t matter. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody.
“You know what?” King said, when they got inside and he saw the Oak King table. “This is nuts. I’m taking Reggie and Jake to Boston for the next couple of days.”
“Why?” Harmony and her sisters asked.
“To protect them—”
“And yourself,” Harmony said.
“Right.” He ushered Reggie and Jake toward the great hall door and turned back to her. “Stay, have your ceremony, then go.”
Harmony recovered from her shock and followed them.
“Let’s go, Reggie. Get in the helicopter.”
“But, Dad, we need to pack our things. And I wanna stay.”
“We’re going. We’ll get everything we need in Boston.”
Reggie sighed, and King got her and Jake settled before he went around the helicopter to get in, but he looked back at Harmony, and their eyes met and held.
She raised her chin so he wouldn’t see how much she hurt. “You protect them from me,” she said, “and I’ll protect them from Gussie.”
He gave her a half nod and got in the chopper. By the time it lifted off, she turned to find Aiden, Morgan, and her sisters behind her.
Destiny took her arm. “Maybe we shouldn’t go through with the ritual. I mean, he doesn’t care. We could go home and let him keep Gussie.”
Harmony stopped. “Listen to that demented cry. If it were just King, I’d go,” she said, “I’m mad enough. But Reggie and Jake love this place. It’s their first real home. We need to try and reclaim it for them.”
“That’s sporting of you,” Aiden said. “King doesn’t deserve you.”
“No, he doesn’t.” But she’d belong to him forever, whether he wanted her to or not.
Storm took her other arm. “Sending Gussie to a place of peace, and away from here, is your psychic mandate, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I believe that bringing peace to Paxton Castle is the reason I was directed here.”
“You realize that you may never see King again,” Storm said.
Harmony laid her head on the rebel’s shoulder. “I don’t believe I will.”
They sat on the beach, Destiny holding one of her hands and Storm holding the other. “You can’t read him like you used to, can you?” Storm asked.
“How did you know? Weird, isn’t it?”
Storm shook her head with regret. “Not if you’ve fallen in love with him.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Well, I am, but I also see the present. You’re in love with the tight-assed technocrat. Not only that, you’re pretty fond of his off-with-your-head castle, and you adore his daughter and grandson.”
“A grandfather? I’m in love with a doddering old grandfather.”
Morgan chuckled and bent down in front of her with a glass of something the color of King’s eyes.
She sniffed it. “I hope this is very strong tea.”
“Whiskey. Go ahead. Do you good.”
She sipped it, and while she did, she thought about the way she drank King in when his whiskey eyes gazed into hers.