The Rise of the Dark Lord Read online

  “So everyone wishes to be, how is it that people say it…out about our powers, I’ll be out. Very out. In a way no one would consider lighting a torch and finding their pitchfork.”

  Now I was seeing where she was coming from (kinda).

  Okay, so yeah.

  Again.

  Actually talking to people led to (kinda) understanding them.

  Gulk.

  “Agatha, no one will harm us and not just because we’re way more powerful than them,” I assured.

  “Yes, I believe the witches of the Burning Times thought that. And the witches in Salem. And witches and vampires and werewolves and etc. since the dawn of time.”

  This sucked.

  Because she had a point.

  “So what’s this Dark Lord malarkey?” I asked.

  “If you have the power, all the power, you have the control.”

  “Um, just pointing out, if you give him the power, you don’t have the power.”

  “We’re a team,” she sniffed.

  “Okay, Agatha, since we’re sharing historical perspectives here, what man who had power shared his power with a woman…since the dawn of time?”

  “I won’t be powerless,” she replied.

  “I’ve been reading up on these guys, and if you give him what you could give him if this comes to fruition, you would be. You’d be no match for him. No one would.”

  “The others sought to create the Dark Lord for vengeance or other weak reasons. I seek to create one as a strategy. A strategy Jeremy is in concurrence with. I know what I’m doing. I’m not stuck in the past. I’m looking toward the future, a future I do not want, but one being forced on me. A future that means humans will know of our existence and have their usual reactions to that. A future where all supernaturals need to be prepared for those reactions, and it is I, and Jeremy, who are preparing for them. And that’s the difference.”

  “Not to be funny, but you just mentioned the Burning Times and Salem. That wasn’t exactly yesterday.”

  Her face got hard. “You try me, Mathilda Honeycutt.”

  I tried her?

  She hit me with a kill spell and was right then making me sit with my back to the Hemingway Bar!

  I decided not to get pissed.

  A lot was at stake here.

  I needed to keep my shit together.

  “Agatha, honest to the Goddess, I really would like to come to some kind of understanding. I will admit, in the beginning, I went off half-cocked not knowing what I was doing—”

  “It’s good you admit that.”

  At this point, I chanted in my head, Keep your cool, Matty. Keep your cool.

  Out loud I said, “But as you can see, I’m not the only one who feels the way I do.”

  “Young people think they know everything, when they don’t.”

  Okay, boomer, I did not say.

  “There are a lot of not young people who feel the same as me,” I said.

  “They’re misguided.”

  I shut up.

  The waiter came with my drink.

  I said, “Merci beaucoup.”

  He gave me another smile, another little bow, shot Agatha a blank glance (clearly, she didn’t order in French or even try) and walked away.

  I took a sip without taking my rose off my glass because drinking a Hemingway martini with a rose attached in the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz was…everything.

  Okay, no.

  After downing that sip, it was that martini that was everything.

  Mental note: make olive juice ice cubes the second I was back at The Acre.

  Mental note 2: don’t wait to be back at The Acre, make them in Ash’s Parisian flat.

  “Is there anything I can say that would change your strategy?” I asked, suspecting the answer was no, which gave me a not-so-good tingle that she’d called me there as a ruse and Bligh was out there, creating death and destruction among people I loved.

  “You could join us.”

  Fortunately, I wasn’t taking a sip of my martini or it’d be all over her face.

  And this was not fortunate because I didn’t want to spit in her face.

  It was fortunate because I didn’t want to do anything so gauche at the Ritz or waste even a drop of that martini.

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “I hear Sebastian is turning Fae. You’re the Prophesied One. If the two of you joined us, we wouldn’t be formidable. We’d be unstoppable.”

  Agatha Darling wanted to ally with…

  Me?

  For curiosity’s sake, I queried, “And what would the four of us do with our omnipotence?”

  “Whatever we wanted.”

  Ding! Ding! Ding!

  Wrong answer!

  “Aga—”

  She leaned toward me. “No one would ever harm a witch again.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” I said quietly.

  She leaned back. “You told me you’d been reading about the past Dark Lords. If you have, you know I can.”

  “Even the Dark Lord can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Fabulous.

  “And they’ve all been defeated,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, after they enjoyed long periods of supremacy.”

  She wasn’t barmy.

  She wasn’t crackers.

  She wasn’t crazy.

  She was insane.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I really have no desire to rule the world,” I admitted.

  World Cookery Domination, yes.

  Patent subjugation of everyone not me?

  No.

  She flicked out a hand. “Then we remain on opposite sides.”

  Okay, so now I was seeing how some talks irretrievably broke down.

  It was me who leaned forward at that.

  “He’s going to turn on you,” I whispered.

  “Do you think I haven’t thought of that?”

  “No, but I think you may be overestimating the weight you carry. You complete the rituals and make him what you want him to be, with Fae magic to boot, your side of the scale is much lighter than you think, his will come crashing down and you’ll be flying without a parachute.”

  I wasn’t sure my mixed metaphor worked, but she got me.

  “I’ve taken precautions.”

  “And you think the ones before you didn’t?”

  “I think they weren’t me.”

  Okay.

  Insane.

  And totally conceited.

  I sat back and took another sip.

  “Are we done?” she asked.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I wish we weren’t because I wish you’d listen to me. But I’m guessing we are.”

  She nodded and stood, sweeping out of the bar, leaving her rose on the table (and me stuck with the bill).

  I sighed.

  About thirty seconds later, I heard Ash order from behind me. “Switch seats.”

  That was my guy.

  When I was with him, I always got the better seat.

  I stood, looked up at him, he bent and touched his lips to mine, then I sat on the bench at the back and he sat on the little stool opposite me.

  Much better view.

  Of the bar, and the fact my fiancé was hot.

  He slid my drink my way.

  I took it up, rose and all, and downed a lot more than a sip.

  The waiter came and Ash ordered the same as me, in French, because he was already posh, no effort required.

  “How did that go?” he asked.

  “Not well,” I answered.

  “We have the Pegasus feather,” he shared.

  I’m pretty sure I blinked about a thousand times in ten seconds.

  Then I asked, “What?”

  “While you had her occupied—”

  “You carried out an operation without me?”

  Yup.

  I raised my voice.

  In the Ritz.

 
But WTF?

  “No. You played your part. You kept her occupied. We retrieved the feather. Mission accomplished.”

  “You do know it’s impossible for me to be mad at you because A, I’m in the Ritz, B, I’m wearing Dior and Chanel, C, I’m drinking the best martini in the world, and D, we have the Pegasus feather and I’m assuming no one got dead in getting it or you’d be a lot less cheerful so I can’t really complain.”

  “I do know this,” he replied.

  Fucking Ash.

  So that was how we got the Pegasus feather.

  And I actually couldn’t complain.

  Because it might have had a frustrating end…

  But I got the fun part.

  14 September

  Bonus to being in Paris: Josie, Aidan and Rory were close.

  They visited.

  We filled them in.

  Ash decided we’d stay on that side of the pond for a while because all the back and forth wasn’t doing our bodies any good, and the baddies weren’t leaving Europe or Asia so it was a waste of time to be in Denver when they were over here.

  Paris Highlights So Far (in reverse order):

  3) Froze olive juice and introduced Josie and Aidan (not Rory) to the Hemingway martini (Aidan had already had it, of course).

  2) Shopped with Josie.

  1) Ash took me on what he called “a surprise expedition” which I thought had to do with Darling and Bligh, but in the end was a trip to Lydia Courteille’s boutique where he bought me a ring from her Marie Antoinette Dark Side collection (exquisite).

  (Love my man!)

  The rest of the time I’ve been spending in a makeshift magic room in Ash’s flat, trying to break cloaking spells so we could recover more relics or find our nemeses (who were no longer staying at the Ritz, or at least, none of the relics were there).

  And failing.

  So, although enjoying Paris a whole lot more, not making much progress in saving the world.

  In other words, mixed bag.

  17 September

  Just got in trouble with my fiancé.

  Aidan and Josie had to go back because Rory had to go back to school.

  The rest of the team is doing fun stuff like visiting the Louvre or going to see that awesome Van Gogh interactive experience or hitting vintage shops and bringing back Hermès scarves and I was stuck trying to track Gorgon blood and some very dead bitch’s knife.

  Okay, so I was stuck in Ash’s fabulous Parisian apartment.

  But I was still stuck.

  Ash had gone out for a run.

  So I took the opportunity to take a break, the break I decided to take became all-consuming, and thus, I didn’t hear him when he arrived home.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, and honest to the Goddess, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  I twisted away from my laptop and looked up at him. “Taking a break.”

  “Taking a break from saving the world?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes dropped to my laptop before they came back to me.

  “To browse Pinterest?”

  “To browse wedding ideas on Pinterest, and before you go all Ash on me, I’ve actually gotten a lot done.”

  “Do you have a lock on Sorcha’s Book of Shadows?”

  “No, I’ve decided our wedding colors are going to be ballet slipper and opera mauve with ivory and maybe the color of moss thrown in for contrast.”

  Ash stood still and stared down at me, unspeaking.

  “Our flowers are going to be roses, Calla lilies and hyacinth, which means we need a spring wedding.”

  Ash remained speechless.

  “And I don’t care how much it costs, it’s going to be a plated dinner. None of that buffet stuff for us. It takes forever for the line to go through and then you have the gluttons who act like they’ve never seen food before when it’s free. On the other hand, we’re having an open bar, but only until a certain time. I don’t want some drunk fool ruining the wedding video or smashing into the cake. Which, by the way, is going to be yellow cake with Italian buttercream and alternating layers of fresh strawberries and blueberries to semi-reflect the colors of the wedding, with the bonus of being the colors of both of our flags. And no naked cakes. They’re gorgeous, but it’s all about the frosting.”

  “Darling, we’ve agreed, they probably used all the Gorgon blood for the attack on Red Rock so the next most important relic we need to get our hands on is that Book of Shadows. I love that you’re excited about our wedding. But we have priorities.”

  I gave him the thumb and forefinger half an inch and squinted through that space at him.

  “I’m just taking a little break to clear my head and give me the will to fight on.”

  “How about letting finding that Book of Shadows and taking away the resource that provides a step by step guide to creating a Dark Lord, which might bring us closer to eventually having a wedding, give you the will to fight on?”

  I sighed.

  He kissed the top of my head.

  I set aside my computer and turned toward my own Book of Shadows to record that incident with Ash.

  I didn’t get my book open before Ash spoke from the door.

  “Yes, plated dinner. Yes, time limit on open bar. Yes, Italian buttercream. Absolutely no to any shade of mauve.”

  “But opera mauve is—”

  “Mathilda.”

  I scrunched my face at him.

  He gave me a soft look and walked out.

  So it was part that soft look and part the fact he’d just demonstrated he was interested in the planning of our wedding that made me smile before I grabbed my journal.

  And now that I’ve recorded that incident with Ash, I have to get back to my magickal implements.

  Gluh.

  24 September

  Back on our personal jet (way better than saying “chartered flight”) on our way to Forest of Dean.

  Yes, Ash and I had made a pact we were going nowhere near England.

  Yes, the Forest of Dean is in England.

  Yes, my vision foretold seriously bad things happening to me in England.

  But get this shit.

  Maithieliel has escaped.

  The Evil Queen is on the loose.

  In the human realm.

  And our elite team had been called in to do something about it.

  Yeah.

  Sometimes my life sucks.

  ACK!

  6 October

  We have the bitch pinned.

  Wish us luck.

  7 October

  Okay, right.

  Got her.

  Shoo.

  This is how it went down:

  We get to the Forest of Dean.

  We go to the Realm.

  And this might seem like no biggie, but remember:

  Ash and I had been incarcerated and witnessed a brutalization the last time we were there, so no fun returning and reliving those memories.

  BecBec was with us and she’d renounced being Fae and said she’d never return, (not to mention, the last time she was there, she’d been incarcerated too, and had been sentenced to a fate akin to death for a faerie). But since she’d vowed allegiance to the team, she was at odds, ticked, didn’t want to go home, or see Cystien, but felt she had to, so was generally in a surly mood.

  Outside Sar and Trae (obvs), the rest had never been to the Realm so they were acting like we were on a wicked-cool vacation adventure they couldn’t wait to embark on (which made BecBec surlier).

  And on the whole, we didn’t have time for this shit because we had a world to save, which made both me and Ash surly (er).

  The minute we get down there, we’re taken to the Imperial Order (the three elfin dudes who act in Cystien’s stead).

  We’re taken to them because Cystien is nowhere to be found.

  They report to us he’s “riding the alternate dimensions.”

  That was what they said.

  “Riding the alternate dimensions.”


  In other words, as far as I could tell, he was off on a wicked-cool vacation adventure.

  Like all hell in two realms wasn’t breaking loose!

  Now I’m pissed at Cystien.

  Ash is certifiably livid (and it was me who could certify that seeing as I felt the need to ask for a leave of absence to go buy a ski suit, he was so pissed he was frosty).

  But at least we have an explanation of how Mathielieliel got loose.

  Because Cystien wasn’t around to keep tabs on her or the faeries who were guarding her (who, as an aside, she’d bribed so now they were all on the loose—the Evil Queen and half a dozen mercenary minions).

  They knew one thing.

  She wasn’t in the Realm.

  Wait.

  Sorry.

  They knew two things.

  She wasn’t in the Realm and they’d checked the “residue of the mounds” (an aside to explain: pixie dust from faerie wings leaves residue and none of her minions’ residue was anywhere to be found in the portals to other dimensions) so they were deducing from this that she wasn’t “riding the alternate dimensions.”

  That meant, unless they were wrong, she was on the surface.

  Though my guess was she was going after Cystien.

  My guess was wrong.

  Because it wasn’t long when their guess was confirmed, seeing as she was wreaking havoc up on the surface.

  Enter Complication Part Infinity when the Prime Minister gets wind that shit’s gone seriously south in the supernatural world as pertains to the Fae.

  Not surprisingly, he then demands Ash, Marcus and me to show our faces at 10 Downing Street to explain the “spate of sightings” of a “she-devil” who’s seducing young men and then incinerating them in their beds after she’s done with them.

  Ahem.

  The entire country is in an uproar about this serial killer the media have dubbed The Shadow Widow (I hate that that’s kinda catchy, but I can’t deny that it is).

  I don’t have time for this (even though I kinda wanna visit 10 Downing Street).

  Ash doesn’t have time for this.

  So Marcus goes with Dr. Bennett to try to reassure the PM we’ve got it all in hand.

  When we absolutely do not.