A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums (Lilith and Co. #1)

Chapter 19

Chapter

Nineteen

“ L ilith’s granddaughter?” someone shouted as the blackness lifted. “Only you, Luc. Only you would get involved with Lilith’s granddaughter.”

“He’s not involved with her,” Connor spat.

“Does your mongrel know who I am?”

“You know he does, and he’s not a mongrel. But she is his mate. Can you help or not?”

I opened my eyes to see a handsome, dark-haired man with a copper glow surrounding him. He had deep-brown eyes and a strong jaw. One could call him conventionally handsome, but not drop-dead gorgeous like Luc or even blow-my-ever-loving-mind like Connor. He wore a copper breastplate, which seemed a bit over the top for the situation.

“She’s pretty, I’ll give you that,” the man said. “And she’s coming to. It’s best I knock her out again so she doesn’t feel this part.” He ran his hand over my body and the blackness settled in again. When I started to regain consciousness, I was… well, I was in an operating room. Bright blue-white lighting. The dark-haired man stood over me in a copper surgery gown and mask. His head was covered in one of those ugly paper head coverings that surgeons wore. I saw an IV and my brother on a bed next to mine. “Not yet,” the man said to me.

When I woke up next, the room had shifted to a type of recovery room. “How are you feeling?” the man asked.

“Tired,” I answered.

“I thought we lost you a couple of times. Rest now. I’ll check on you in a bit.” Who was I to argue? I closed my eyes again.

After drifting off to sleep a couple more times and waking up in the same recovery room, the last time I woke up, I was beyond glad to have Connor sitting by my bed holding my hand.

“Hey,” I said in a voice so scratchy, it sounded as if I’d dragged it over sandpaper. His head lifted, showing me those coal-black eyes I couldn’t get enough of.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he ordered while pressing his forehead to mine and he breathed in slowly.

“It’s just a scratch,” I tried to tease, but I ended up in a coughing jag from too much speaking so soon after almost dying. It hurt, too. Like, really bad.

“The one time I want you to talk,” Connor muttered. I opened my mouth to try to relieve some of his worry, but he stopped me with a kiss of the heart-melting, this man truly loved me variety. I sighed instead.

“How’s our girl?” Luc’s soft, sexy-melodic voice interrupted our moment.

“Alive,” I replied.

“Listen, I have some bad news. Can you handle it?”

“No—” Connor said.

At the same time, I answered, “Why not?”

“Sorry, man. This is important, so I’m going with her answer. The demons wouldn’t talk for a ridiculous amount of time, no matter what I did to coax it out of them. Finally, I got one to break. They were sent by Beetle. Something about Simone controlling all the world’s magic.”

“I don’t—” I started. “That’s not right.”

He shrugged. “I’m only telling you what he said. It’s like a super highway with you as the hub. He’s either going to control you or kill you.”

“Why?” Connor asked as he gave my hand a squeeze.

“Supers keep the world in check.”

“Easier to take over,” my mate mumbled. “ Shit .”

“Shit, indeed,” Luc replied.

“Let me get this straight… This Beetle person wants to take over the world, and he either needs me on his side or dead to do it?”

Luc nodded several times in short succession. “Seems like it.”

“How unoriginal. Why do the bad guys always have to be so trite?” I asked, causing both men to laugh at me, which, with the way Connor scowled so deeply that it caused the skin to wrinkle around his mouth, was a feat. If he didn’t let up on the death grip on my hand, my new nickname would be ‘Stumpy.’ “Connor,” I whined and he snapped his head to look at me then down at my hand beginning to turn purple.

“Sorry.” He let go and that pins-and-needles feeling spread through my hand and up my arm. “I want to talk to them,” he said to Luc.

“No can do, buddy.”

“You’re really going to try to stop me?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Luc answered what I felt was earnest. “But one of them managed to get his hand down his boot, where he apparently kept two sort of tiny death grenades because he tossed one at the other demon and the dude disintegrated right before my eyes. And while I was distracted, he smashed the other one against his own chest and the same thing happened. I’ve never seen that kind of magic before. You have to behead a demon to kill it.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said.

“I fucking hate it,” Connor countered. “Do Simeon, my sister, and Lily Joy know?”

“Lily Joy was with me. She witnessed the whole thing. Madigan looked after Simeon while he recovered.”

And speak of the devil, or should I say Lilium. “Knock, knock,” Lily Joy said from the doorway. She carried a tray of tea. “This is either an illegal party or strategy session. Neither of which my cousin is strong enough for yet.” She walked the tray over to me, set it down on the bedside table, and began to pour me a cup. “Move,” she ordered Connor, who simply growled at her and scooted his chair back slightly. I’ll note, he did not move.

Next, I heard, “This must be the cool kids’ room.”

“You too?” Connor barked at his sister.

“Sim wanted to check on his sister and I’d like to meet my sister-in-law. Since they’re one and the same, here we are. Deal with it, big brother.” She held my brother’s hand as they walked in together. He appeared tired, but not much worse for wear. He made it to the bed, dropping down on the opposite side of Connor.

“Hey,” he said, smiling at me.

“Hey,” I said back.

“It’s good to see you finally awake. You were kind of a mess when we got here.”

“It was just a graze,” I said, watching as Connor dropped his head and then turned it up to the sky. Possibly for deliverance?

“Of all the mates in the world…” Connor bemoaned his plight.

“I feel you,” my brother replied in commiseration. “Madi’s like a trouble-seeking missile.”

“Then we keep them apart,” my mate grumbled. “Who knows what kind of trouble they’ll get into together.”

“All the best kinds,” I replied. “Hi, sister-in-law. It’s good to finally meet you in person while not actively dying.”

Madigan approached the bed, sitting down next to my brother. “It’s good to meet you, too. Thank you for helping us.”

“It’s what families do,” I replied, loving the fact that I’d gone from being totally alone in the world to having this crazy, eclectic family of both the born and made variety. “Now, that you’re all here, we were talking about Beetle and his boring plan to take over the world.”

“Bad guys always want to take over the world,” Madigan said, waving her hand in a very blasé attitude. “Why can’t they ever come up with something new?”

“ Madi ,” my brother admonished in a distinctly disgruntled tone that I recognized from my own mate.

“Not now, dear. The women are speaking,” she replied, shutting him down and I seriously had to bite my lip to keep from giggling out loud. Normally, I wouldn’t have cared, but the man did just save my life by giving me his blood. Simeon rolled his eyes to the heavens. Something else he and Connor had in common.

I drank from the cup forced into my hands by Lily Joy. The tea tasted mostly of lemon and ginger, but I knew it packed a recovery punch. Lily Joy had a knack for that. I’d drink a gallon of this stuff rather than ever have to imbibe on fallen angel tea ever again. Even remembering the taste made me want to vomit, but I magnanimously held it back, giving my friends the boon they didn’t know they almost didn’t receive.

“Did the demon say anything else before he disintegrated?” I asked Luc.

“Only that time is ticking or something along those lines,” he replied.

“How long do we think until they come back for me?”

“I guess it depends. Were the demons able to communicate that there were three of us here?” Connor asked. “Beetle would have to prepare. He’s already planning something. I mean, if I sent henchmen to do my dirty work and they stopped checking in, I’d figure the plan had gone wrong. One thing we know about Beetle, he’s not stupid. He knows something went wrong.”

Yeah, I thought of that, too.

“But he couldn’t know about us, right?” Simeon asked. “He couldn’t know that Madi and I made it here. The last he knew, we were injured, on the run, with no idea that Simone even existed.”

“ Shit ,” Luc said, startling me and I jumped. “I just remembered, I hung back before starting my interrogation, listening for anything useful before they clammed up. I heard one say, ‘What about the book?’”

“Book?” Connor asked, and it hit me. Bam! Right between the eyes. The book Lilith left me with. The family’s grimoire.

“I have to get home,” I said.

“Talk to me,” Connor said.

“The book. I need to get it.”

“Shit, I forgot about that. It’s at home?”

I nodded.

“Someone want to fill me in?” Luc asked. Madigan and Simeon stared at me, clearly confused.

“Sim,” I asked. “do you still have the hilt of a dagger?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Connor, can you grab my bag?” He nodded once, standing to walk over to the corner of the room where my bag sat on the floor. He walked it back over to me. I dug inside, pulling out the jewel, holding it up for Simeon to get a good look at.

“What is that?” my brother asked.

“It’s part of Lilith’s dagger,” I said. Mouths dropped open. “You found a?—”

“Solid gold hilt,” he said, cutting me off. “I recognize the shape.”

“We didn’t bring it,” Madigan said. “We didn’t know we needed to. It was just a pretty piece of gold.”

“How could you have known?” I asked. “A witch told me. Did you consult any powerful witches?”

“We never had the chance,” Simeon said. “Madi and I tracked down a powerful one named Agnetha, but we were attacked before we got to her. Then we were on the run, trying not to die.”

“What about the book?” Luc asked.

“It’s the family grimoire,” I admitted and I swore you could hear a pin drop in the room from the dead silence. Yeah, that was quite the bombshell.

“The family grimoire?” Lily Joy asked. “As in our family?”

“As in Lilith’s grimoire,” I replied. “She left it with me with it. The gem found me.”

“The gold knife hilt found me,” Simeon said. “I was metal detecting in a farmer’s field about three years ago. I got a hit and dug that out of the dirt. Since it was clearly worth something, I kept it.”

“Did Lilith leave you with anything as a baby?” Connor asked my brother. And now more than ever, I needed to know the answer too. She had to have, right? If she left me the grimoire, she had to have left Simeon something important, too.

“A book. A handwritten book with leaves or flowers pressed between the pages. A description of each of the plants on the page.”

“Do you still have it?” Connor asked then.

“It’s at home, with the hilt.”

“You don’t think she left you—” I started to say.

“Plants from the Garden of Eden,” Lily Joy finished for me. Yeah, she was smart.

“So let me get this straight,” Luc said, pausing for effect. “Lilith left you”—he pointed at me—“her grimoire and you”—he pointed at my brother—“plants from the freaking garden of Eden? And you left them unguarded?”

“We didn’t know their significance,” Simeon said in our defense.

“How could we have?” I defended us, too.

“Not helping,” Connor snapped at his best friend.

“So here’s the plan,” I said because someone had to take charge. “We need Luc to do some snooping and try to identify Beetle for us. Lily Joy, you start researching what kinds of magic those demons got a hold of. How did they find us? How did they off themselves without a beheading?”

“I’ll get right on that,” she agreed.

“Sim, Madi—you need to get back to your home to get the botanical book and the hilt. Connor and I will go after the grimoire.”

“All right, I’m out,” Luc said. “Check in at least once a day, okay? I need to know you all aren’t dead.” Then he kissed Lily Joy’s cheek and she blushed. Then he kissed Madigan’s cheek, and my brother gave him a death glare. When he bent in to kiss my cheek, Connor growled, baring his teeth. “Down, boy,” Luc teased and my mate narrowed his eyes at the fallen angel who was totally taking his life in his hands once again. “You’re right, Simone, this is fun. But seriously, I could no more bump uglies with you than I could Connor here. You’re like a sister now… Unless—are you and my boy here solid?”

“Hades, Luc!” Connor snapped. “Quit hitting on my mate. Today is not the day, man.”

“You’re right. My apologies. I’ll try again tomorrow.” Luc dodged my bag that Connor threw at his head and jogged out of the room calling, “Later,” over his shoulder. I tried to use magic to keep my bag from falling and spilling out the contents all over the floor, but I lacked the strength to do more than slow the descent so it hit with a small poof . The flap opened, but only a couple of trinkets rolled out.

“We’re not going anywhere today, sweetheart,” Connor said, his eyes moving between my bag and me. “Please don’t argue. You’re not ready and I can’t—” He cut himself off, shaking his head.

I felt what he felt. He’d almost lost me. It gutted me to even imagine what he’d gone through while waiting for me to get through the transfusion and time in recovery.

“I won’t argue,” I said and he stood from the chair so fast that it tipped backward, hitting the floor as he dropped into a fighting stance.

“Who are you and what have you done with Simone?” he barked, and at first, I thought he was serious until he winked at me. “What?” he asked cheekily. “My Simone takes every opportunity to argue with me. I figured you had to be a demon in disguise.”

“You truly are an idiot.”

“But you love me.”

“Unfortunately,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“You seriously aren’t going to argue with me on this?”

I shook my head. “If I had been in your place…” Tears actually pricked my eyes.

Connor scooted me over on the bed so he could sit down next to me. He caught the one tear that fell with his finger. “You don’t have to worry about that, babe,” he replied low, but with lots of feeling.

“It’s not that I like you,” I countered through my sniffles. “It’s just you do that thing with the twist and I’d miss that.”

“And this is where I nope out of this conversation,” Madigan said, patting my arm. “I don’t need to hear those details about my brother.”

“But I mean, it’s life-changing,” I said to her, laughing. “If we compare notes, you might?—”

“La, la, la, la, la,” Madigan singsonged.

“You shouldn’t go today, either,” Lily Joy told them. “Simeon still looks tired. Rest today. Leave in the morning.”

It felt wrong to waste another day, but we needed to be healthy for this to work. The world depended on us, and most of humanity didn’t even know it.