Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4) Read online

  “Not at all, Isa,” I said. “I take more than I give. As you well know.”

  Kader looked at Isa with interest — possibly for the first time since the conversation had begun. “Tangled with Amp5, have you? That must have been —”

  Aiden slammed his hand down on the table, causing the tea to slosh from the pot. “That’s enough!”

  Even I flinched.

  “I won’t have it,” Aiden snarled, glancing between Kader and Isa. “Not in my home, Emma’s home. You will be civil, or I’ll drain you myself.”

  Isa raised his hands in a placating gesture. “My apologies. It’s a difficult memory to shake.”

  Kader smirked. “I imagine.”

  Aiden thrust a finger at his father. “You will leave in the morning.”

  That wiped the smile from Kader’s face.

  “The four of us will spend the evening researching your … predicament,” Aiden continued, heated. “But you will leave whether or not we’ve found a solution.”

  “And then what should I do?” Kader asked coolly. “Wait to die? Prepare my death curse?”

  Aiden ignored the threat, but he moderated his tone. “We four will continue to research —”

  “We need a Myers witch,” Grosvenor interrupted.

  “We have a Myers,” Isa snapped.

  The curse breaker shook his head. Then he looked at me as if trying to get me on his side. Or maybe he thought I could read his mind.

  I couldn’t. But I realized what he was asking.

  “You need multiple Myers witches,” I murmured. “Including Cerise.”

  “Yes,” the young curse breaker said. “Sky Myers, Aiden’s sister, attends school with me.”

  Feeling an unaccustomed level of trepidation, I reflected for a moment on the glimpse of the future Christopher had seen. A future that required extra beds and food and eventually me reaching for my blades. Did I want to invite that level of sure-to-be chaos into my life? Into Aiden’s life? When we were both already feeling so off-balance?

  Did I have another choice?

  No.

  Not if I wanted to thwart Kader Azar’s death curse.

  I glanced at the elder sorcerer. “You’d have to be willing to make concessions.”

  He waved his hand offishly. “Anything.”

  “Emma?” Aiden asked. Though we weren’t touching, I could feel his uncertainty. I didn’t, however, want to let him, or any of the sorcerers, see that I shared it.

  I kept my gaze on Kader. “And to offer safe passage. In writing.”

  Kader shrugged, smiling. “Of course.”

  “This is exactly what you planned,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I had hoped that my son could take care of it.”

  “I can,” Aiden snapped. Then he softened his tone. “Given time.”

  “Time I no longer have,” Kader said. “As a result of how long it took for you to open my letter.”

  Aiden leaned across the table. “You’re a fucking prick who deserves to die.”

  “That may well be,” Kader said smoothly. “But I’ll take all of you with me. Maybe even the amplifier. Depending on how much I contributed to her genetic mix.”

  And there it was.

  “Excuse me?” Isa snarled.

  Aiden’s power unfurled, licking outward across the table.

  It was my turn to try to balance us. I just wasn’t completely certain I was up to the task.

  “Really?” I asked mockingly. “That’s all you’re going to claim? You might have contributed some genetics? And you think that should hold sway over me? Over Aiden? Why?”

  “Well, bloody hell,” Grosvenor muttered. “You might be siblings. At least that’s what the old man seems to be implying.”

  “Please,” I scoffed. “Look at me.”

  They all did. Even freckled from spending so much time in the sun, I was so much paler than the four of them that my skin appeared practically white. Green eyes. Dark-red hair. The shape of my face and nose was rounder, softer than the carved features of the Azars.

  Aiden settled back in his seat, once again contained. Unruffled.

  “Plus,” I said, settling my gaze on Kader — completely unable to keep my mouth shut now that I’d opened it. Again. “You made certain none of us could breed. So what does it matter who we sleep with?”

  “What?” Isa asked, outraged.

  “Oh, that’s the line for you, Isa?” Aiden smirked. “A step too far?”

  “No,” Isa snapped. “The messing with DNA was already too far. But depriving a sentient being of —”

  “We’re off topic,” Kader said, his tone commanding and backed by a slight push of power. He cast his gaze over all of us, lingering on Aiden, then settling on me.

  “I don’t take orders from you, sorcerer,” I said quietly.

  He grimaced. “The boys don’t play well together.”

  “When did you ever give us the chance?” Khalid snapped.

  Kader sighed, ignoring his middle child and looking at me expectantly. I could feel Aiden’s gaze on me as well.

  If the situation was already this out of control, with all of us only moments away from attacking each other, then the decision I was making — the course of action I was about to suggest — was ridiculously idiotic.

  I turned to Aiden.

  He raked his gaze over my face. “You … think I should go to Paris? Appeal to my mother? Intervene?”

  “Do you think he can follow through with his promise?” I asked for the second time. “The death curse?”

  Aiden grimaced, looking to Isa.

  His elder brother frowned deeply, thoughtfully. Then he shook his head slightly. “Not including Emma.” He glanced at his father.

  Kader was leaning back, head slightly bowed, smiling quietly. As if he was simply enjoying the moment.

  Isa snorted. “The amplifier is too powerful, and … unless there is another bond I’m unaware of?”

  He was alluding to the blood tattoos. Bindings embedded in my spine, in my nerves, and anchored in my magic. Bonds whose existence I’d alluded to in front of Isa before breaking out of the cage he’d held me in. Bonds that he might well have felt himself when Christopher arrived with Aiden in the demon dimension to rescue Opal, Jenni, Paisley, and me.

  “There is no other bond.” I glanced at Kader. “There’s no other programming, magical or otherwise. It must have been a terrible concession, sorcerer, allowing us to think for ourselves.”

  “Yes,” he drawled flatly. “A shame, but the fourth generation failed. You understand how they could be easily defeated if faced with any sort of situation that required problem solving. Or if they were suddenly cut off from the handler running the mission.”

  Aiden hissed.

  Isa grimaced, but he spoke. “Then I doubt any death curse could touch Emma, not unless it was tied to her directly. But doing so wouldn’t be dramatic enough for Kader Azar.”

  “Not enough of a threat,” Khalid said. “To hold over us.”

  Isa settled back in his seat, fingers tapping on the table. Thoughtful, once again in control. “Grosvenor and that side of the family should be fine. But …”

  “Aiden?” I prompted. “And he threatened the entire Myers coven earlier.”

  A muscle in Kader’s jaw twitched. He didn’t like being talked about as though he weren’t in the room. Good to know.

  Isa’s eyes narrowed, like a predator seeing a weakness in its prey. I wondered if his expression was echoed on my own face. “He’d have to have access to Myers blood …” He looked at his younger brother.

  I went cold. Completely and utterly cold. “And if I kill him now?”

  “I’m already dead,” Aiden said tonelessly. “He would have prepared the death curse, refined it, before he set foot on the property.”

  Everyone but me looked at Kader. All their expressions were hard, edged with disbelief.

  I looked at Aiden. “I … I invited him in.”

  H
e shook his head. “The wards wouldn’t have stopped him or a death curse.” He looked at Isa for confirmation.

  His elder brother’s attention was riveted to his father, as if he was possibly contemplating killing him. And maybe murdering Aiden at the same time.

  “Isa?” Aiden repeated. “He walked through the property boundary unhindered.”

  Isa flicked his gaze from his father to his youngest brother. “Agreed. Any ward constructed by you, he’d be able to pass through. He doesn’t even need your blood. He can just use what runs in his own veins. Harness the energy released by his death.”

  “What if I kill him from far away with no notice?” I asked.

  Isa shook his head. “Too risky.”

  “While this is a riveting conversation,” Kader said, “you certainly don’t need me here for it.”

  “I can’t believe you’d kill your own flesh and blood,” I said, not caring what weakness I was potentially revealing. “After everything you did to Cerise Myers to get Aiden.”

  “Everything I did,” Kader scoffed.

  “It’s still rape, asshole,” I said. “Even if you coerced consent. Just ask Isa.”

  Isa blinked at me, surprised.

  “Did you give me permission?” I asked.

  Isa’s jaw dropped — then he figured out what I was referring to. Our conversation about forced amplification in the diner months ago. He laughed darkly. “Well, I didn’t know what you were capable of, did I?”

  “Exactly.” I glared at Kader. “But you need me to invite Cerise Myers here. You need me to guarantee her safety.”

  “You are a somewhat neutral party,” he said smugly.

  I felt the overwhelming urge to wring that smugness from every cell of Kader Azar’s body. I would drain him until he wept for forgiveness, slowly, painfully. Until he was simply frozen in terror.

  Grosvenor cursed under his breath, breaking into the moment. “So just to be clear, I never want Emma to look at me like that, right? Is that the look you see right before she murders you?” He looked at Aiden pointedly. “With permission from your cousin?”

  “Yes,” Aiden growled.

  “Oh, yes,” Isa said.

  “You’re still alive, sorcerer,” I said evenly to Isa.

  “You weren’t actually trying to kill me.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  Aiden touched my arm lightly. “I don’t want your … our home involved any more than it is already.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I won’t have you in Paris, traveling with him. Without me.” Because I knew I couldn’t accompany Aiden. I had other responsibilities. To Opal. To Paisley.

  Something I should have given a little more thought to before inviting Kader into our home. Though I was starting to think that the sorcerer would have figured out some way to force the issue, to push me to this decision, even though my presence had initially been a surprise.

  “No one need die,” Kader said. “Reach out to your mother, Aiden. I’m willing to negotiate. To make concessions. But she needs to be here. She needs to agree to meet, and to lift the spell before I sign anything. She can have anything in my power to give her.”

  “Even ten years of her life back?” Aiden asked caustically.

  Kader beamed as though he’d been waiting for the chance to address exactly that point — the years he’d stolen from Cerise Myers. “I just happen to know someone who knows the most powerful telepath in the world.” Slowly, deliberately, he shifted his gaze to me. “You’ll want to negotiate with me as well, amplifier.”

  “You didn’t know I was here. You didn’t know I was with Aiden.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t. And I’ll be taking that up with my eldest son after we get this little mess sorted. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have people everywhere, and those people tell me that you’ve lost a teammate.”

  “I could torture her location out of you,” I said casually. “You can’t fling a death curse at anyone if I don’t actually kill you.”

  “Of course you could. At least if I had the information you seek. But all I have are … whispers.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Aiden muttered.

  “Indeed. I am weary.” Kader rose from the table, carefully setting his chair back in place. “Thank you for the lovely dinner, Emma.”

  His use of my name was deliberate.

  I didn’t react. At least not outwardly. But in my mind’s eye, I grabbed the sorcerer Azar by the neck, slammed him to the table, and sucked every last drop of power from him.

  And that gave me a thought.

  I looked at Aiden. “What if I gave you all your father’s power? Could we kill him then?”

  Kader sighed heavily. Again. Then he turned and crossed out onto the patio and down the stairs, heading for the barn. Paisley slid past me, and I ran my fingers along her side and flank. Squeezing the end of her tail, now short again. “Caution, please.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me, huffed indignantly, then continued to prowl after Kader.

  Grosvenor was glancing between us all. Khalid was outright staring at me. I was so going to start chafing at that weird reaction if he didn’t knock it off. Or maybe I would just shock him out of it.

  Aiden started laughing. His head fell back, shoulders slumping.

  Isa chuckled darkly. “Draining him is too risky.”

  Aiden shook his head, but not in disagreement. “It would also ruin all your plans, Isa. Eight years in the making. The first attempt was thwarted by Emma as well, wasn’t it?”

  “Ten years,” Isa spat ruefully. “It took two years to manipulate the rogue shifters into place.”

  Aiden snorted. Then he stood with a sigh, leaning over to press a kiss to my forehead. “Apparently I have a letter to write?”

  I looked up at him, nodding. “We can always kill him afterward.”

  “We’ll never know,” Aiden said quietly. “If he’s modified his death curse.”

  I smiled smugly. “Given enough time and the right people, we’ll get around that. For example, if he doesn’t know he’s dying, there would be no reason to curse anyone.”

  Aiden grinned, understanding that I was alluding to using Bee to get to his father. “Diabolical, amplifier.”

  Then he straightened, heading toward the hall and the study beyond.

  Isa poured the tea, dropping a teaspoon of sugar in a mug then sliding it across the table to me with a flick of his fingers and a flicker of magic.

  I took the warm mug, inhaling the steam deeply. Chocolate mint. Lovely. And hopefully not too bitter, given how long it had oversteeped.

  Isa poured himself a mug of tea as well. Grosvenor started tidying the kitchen.

  “What the hell?” Khalid finally asked. “Is no one going to address her claim that she can give Father’s power to Aiden?”

  Isa ignored his middle brother, looking at me over the rim of his mug. “We’ve checked into the lodge. I assumed you wouldn’t want us here. But you have open rooms? I suspect the witches will refuse to be housed anywhere you can’t guarantee their safety.”

  “If they come,” I said, ignoring a flicker of uncertainty about hosting the witches, day and night. I would do what I needed to do. As always.

  “They’ll come,” Grosvenor said.

  Isa smirked. “Been informing on Sky Myers, have you, Grover?”

  “We all do things we find distasteful,” the curse breaker said. “For family.”

  “Yes,” Isa mused. “Family.”

  “You said she was an amplifier!” Khalid snarled.

  Isa smiled nastily. “I did. And you refused to stay behind. Where I could protect you.”

  Khalid snarled again, lapsing into the sorcerers’ shared language.

  “English,” Isa said snottily. “Anything else is just rude.”

  Bored by all the mind games seemingly being played around me, I stood. Taking a cookie, I wandered toward the study, seeking Aiden. Sipping my chocolate-mint tea, I ran over the dinner co
nversation in my head, hoping to find a loophole. Something that would let us work around Kader’s death curse — and the need to involve the Myers witches.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t that sort of clever.

  The final wash of the sunset was still lingering in the sky as I left Aiden crafting the letter to his mother, and went to secure the chickens in the coop for the evening. Isa and Grosvenor were in the front sitting room. Isa sat staring broodingly out the front window, a thick leather-bound book open on his lap, and swirling a couple of fingers’ worth of a dark amber liquid in a glass. Scotch, I presumed.

  His gaze flicked to me as I paused briefly in the open doorway to the front hall. He raised the glass slightly with a twist of a smile, then stuck his nose in it, inhaled deeply, and took a tiny sip. The sorcerer must have brought the alcohol and the glass with him — or summoned both from some cache he maintained — because as far as I was aware, we didn’t have either in the house.

  The curse breaker was seated on the floor in front of the coffee table, leaning back against the love seat that backed the front window. At first glance, he appeared to be playing some sort of game that involved intricately etched wooden rectangular tiles, each about ten centimeters long. I didn’t recognize the symbols set into the wood — some appeared to have been seared, others painted in primary colors. His scotch was set to one side on the table, poured over half-melted ice.

  Grosvenor shifted a series of five tiles into a line, then swapped the first two for each other. He tilted his head, as if seeing something within or above the tiles.

  “Grover is still building up his repertoire,” Isa said, noting the direction of my gaze. “Manipulating the flow of his power. Thankfully, he’s unlikely to kill us — or blow up the house — should he make a mistake.”

  The curse breaker snorted. “I don’t blow things up. I simply unlock them.”

  “And the tiles?” I asked. Despite not wanting to get involved any deeper in their family dynamic, it made tactical sense to understand any magic being wielded in my home. “They’re like the notches on a key?”

  “The pattern of the bit?” Isa mused. “An apt analogy. I would expect nothing less from you, Emma.”