Twelve Shades of Midnight: Read online

  He started laughing before they made it to her door. “Why are we being so sneaky?”

  “Because we just had sex in the middle of the day in my place of business. It seems like something we should be sneaky about.”

  “Eloise…” His mouth went dry and his tongue felt thick.

  She paused and looked at him, her hand on the knob to her door. “What?”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve loved you in all our lives. That hasn’t changed and it never will. No matter how many lives we’re blessed with. We’re for each other and no one else.”

  “I love you, Barrett Delaney. In this life and any other.”

  He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to hear her say the words, and he pulled her into his arms, hugging her close.

  “You really need to unlocked your door. It’s a little chilly out here, but I’m willing to give it a go and say to hell with Mrs. Robicek down there. I think being sneaky is for naught. And I probably should’ve told you before, but your shirt is on inside out.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Eloise said. She unlocked the door and they’d just stepped over the threshold when her phone started ringing. She answered and he felt the worry from her immediately, so he took her hand and squeezed it.

  She hung up and grabbed her heavier coat from the peg by the door. “That was Lily. She said we need to come to the house. Minerva has something to tell us.”

  Epilogue

  Barrett grabbed his own heavy coat from his apartment, and they set out across town, taking a right at the statue of Amelia Goodnight and trudging up the winding hill to the Goodnight House.

  Barrett had admired the house on his walks around town the past week. The Victorian was three full stories with balconies on the top two floors and a wraparound porch on the bottom level. There was a turret on the west side and the windows were beveled. The paint was white and fresh and the landscaping some of the most beautiful he’d ever seen with lush trees and blood red roses in full bloom even though they should be long past dead considering the time of year.

  Lily opened the door for them before they made it to the front porch. Her face was pale and worried, but he immediately felt the soothing touch of her magic when she reached out to welcome him with a hug.

  “Welcome, brother,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve found each other again. We’ll all need you before this is over.”

  He kissed her cheek softly. “You know there’s no other place I’d rather be.”

  They found Minerva in the kitchen, an apron wrapped tight around her waist, and a wicked looking knife in her hand. An open bottle of wine breathed on the counter while she chopped onions like a pro.

  “We’re having stew for dinner,” she said. “It seems like a good night for it. Another storm will be here before nightfall. You might as well both stay the night. It’ll be too bad for you to get back to the apartment.”

  “I take that to mean you can see again,” Eloise said, taking a carrot off the vegetable tray Minerva had set out on the table.

  “Minerva, come sit down at the table and tell us what’s going on,” Lily said. “You’ve worried all of us.”

  For as long as Eloise could remember every one of their family meetings had taken place around the kitchen table. They sat together now, Barrett a new edition to the meeting, but it felt natural to include him, as if he’d been joining them all along.

  “My sight has returned,” Minerva said, focusing on the wine in her glass as she twirled the stem between her fingers. “At least for now.”

  She looked directly at Barrett and Eloise noticed the tears in her sister’s eyes. Minerva never cried, and worry clawed at her gut.

  “I’m glad you found her, brother. We will all need you. You know and you’ve seen that the two of you together will always be stronger than on your own. You make us all stronger because you love her. And we love you because of it. Love is the strongest magic of all.”

  “What did you see?” Eloise asked, taking Barrett’s hand when he offered it to her.

  “I haven’t seen what’s coming. But it’s more powerful than I am because it has me blocked. But I do know how we have to defeat it.”

  “Then that’s all that matters,” Lily said. “That means that we can defeat it.”

  “I never said that. I just said I know how we can defeat. Not that we’d be successful.”

  “Optimism was never your strong suit, Minerva,” Barrett said, trying to lighten the mood so the sisters didn’t fight. He knew enough to know he didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of that.

  “You’ve seen our defeat?” Eloise asked, gripping Barrett’s hand so tight his fingers hurt.

  “The key to our success lies in those who complete us—as women as well as witches.” Minerva nodded at Barrett. “Our soulmates. It’s six we need to win against this threat. Not three. It’s why the sisters failed three hundred years ago. Only Amelia had found her soulmate and completed the union.”

  “So all we need to do is find your soulmates,” Barrett said. “If you can see then it shouldn’t be too difficult to find them.”

  “I’ve looked,” Minerva said. She turned to Lily. “Your soulmate is a man of great integrity. And he’s close. You just need to open your eyes and heart to the possibility.”

  “You know I’ll do whatever I need to secure our survival,” Lily said, nodding.

  “Our survival is not the reason to love a man, Lily. You’ll love him with your whole heart. He’ll accept nothing less.”

  “What about your soulmate, Minerva?” Eloise asked. There’d been something in the way she’d spoken about Lily’s soulmate that made her uneasy.

  Minerva looked at Eloise, her eyes filled with such sadness that Eloise moved to embrace her before she could tell her the answer.

  “My soulmate…” she said, taking a shaky breath. “He doesn’t exist. There’s no one for me.” A single tear escaped from the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. Don’t hate me.”

  Liliana Hart is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than a thirty books. She lives in Texas in a big rambling house with her laptop and cats, and she spends way too much time on Twitter. She loves hearing from her readers.

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  For Andrea

  Chapter One

  A uniformed police officer led me to the opening of the prisoner transport van, probably because my negotiating the cramped interior while blindfolded and sporting a nifty set of cuffs was proving rather difficult. Strange. He paused to tug the hood off my head. I squinted against the dull light of a misty gray morning, refusing to visualize my hair after such treatment. Denial was a wonderful place to live. The uniform nodded for me to continue, and I ducked under the opening only to stumble down a grated step. I didn’t have ankle chains on or anything, but spending three days in a dingy interrogation room only to have a hood thrown over my head so I couldn’t see where we were going as we weaved in and out of city traffic had disoriented me. Go figure.

  Thankfully, the uniform had a hold of my arm. He steadied me, but the second I had my footing, I jerked out of his grip. What can I say? I was irked. The authorities had never charged me with a crime, yet they held me for three days against my will. No phone call. No legal representation.

  I had rights!

  Or so I thought. Thanks to the Homeland Security Act and the fact that I had identified a known terrorist in my last attempt to help them solve a crime—this one a fatal bombing at Union Station in Chicago—they had all the authority they needed to hold me as long as their tighty-whities desired. The way I saw it, I was one step away from an extended stay at Gitmo.

  The uniform gave me exactly three seconds to orient to my new surroundings before leading me through a smattering of cop cars. Their lights flashed silently against the brittle trees around us. We were definitely not in the city anymore. Probably an affluent suburb. I lived in a suburb, too, but this one smelled like young families with good jobs. Moms in the PTA. Kids in lacrosse. My suburb was a little less…family oriented.

  The cop lifted a strip of yellow crime scene tape, signaling with another nod for me to duck underneath before leading me past several other officers. They stood in a huddle in front of a small house, the kind with a white picket fence and rows of colorful flowers lining its borders. Only it was winter, and what was left of the flowers lay dead under a crunchy layer of fresh snow. The cops stared at me as they spoke softly to one another, their breaths misting in the crisp air. A heaviness blanketed the area, one that had nothing to do with the gray morning.

  Something had happened here.

  Something bad.

  My lungs seized in surprise, and I almost stumbled again. This was a test. They wanted to see what I could do. To see if I was lying or, more likely, to see if I was in league with a terrorist organization. I should have known better than to send a note to Chicago PD informing them of who’d planted that bomb. Like always, I’d sent it anonymously, but of course they would bend over backwards on such a heinous and high profile case. I’d been so careful. No fingerprints on the paper. A generic printer. Envelopes available at any office supply store. I’d used no local colloquialisms. Left no DNA as I hadn’t licked the envelope to close it. I even used the printer at Kinkos. What gave me away? Where did I screw up? How did they find me?

  However they did it, they’d probably ransacked my entire apartment looking for evidence, but by that point I’d been handcuffed and carted away as fast as their spit-shines could carry me. I lawyered-up immediately, but when Homeland got involved, lawyering-up was not an option. Three days of my life gone was proof of that.

  At first I’d refused to talk. Who would believe me, after all? But after thirty-three and a half hours of the same questions over and over with absolutely no cooperation from yours truly, they threw me in a cell and, it seemed, completely forgot about me. On the third day—or possibly night—they dragged me out to begin the questions anew. Another twelve hours and I broke. Kind of. I disguised the truth in a sea of bullshit, as though I were only kidding when I told them I could go to a spot, any spot, and drop back in time up to 24 hours, I could see what happened at that spot prior to—and during—a crime, but someone behind the observation mirror called a stop to our little party the moment those words left my mouth. As though he knew. As though he believed me no matter how insane the idea. The interrogations stopped completely and thirty minutes later, I was cuffed, blindfolded, and tossed—literally—into a transport van.

  A deep voice caught my attention as we crunched up the snow-covered sidewalk. My focus shifted from the red door decorated beautifully with a fall wreath to a group of men on my left. One of them was the voice behind the mirror. It had the same smooth tenor. The same hint of impatience sprinkled with a healthy dose of anger.

  I studied the group. The angry one, the impatient one from the observation room, caught my eye. While most of the men on scene were uniformed officers and wrinkle-suited detectives, the man with the issues was dressed more…clandestinely. He had straight, shoulder-length black hair that matched the long duster he wore to a tee. It was an odd accessory for an area filled with parkas and trench coats. His hair was in bad need of a trim, as was the shadow along his jaw. It framed a sculpted mouth that lured my gaze as he spoke, his deep voice soft but no less impatient, no less bitter than before. A set of perfectly white teeth flashed occasionally as words fell from his mouth in irritation, and I stared long enough to get the whole group’s attention before practically stumbling up the steps of the house. Right before I lost sight of him, his hard gaze met mine. Clear blue eyes shimmered like the ocean on a summer day beneath impossibly long lashes, the anger in them unmistakable. No, not anger. Contempt?

  I turned away, my brows furrowed in concern as I stepped into the house. An assembly of officers looked toward me, each holding a cup of piping hot coffee. The aroma made my mouth water as the officer led me through the melee to the kitchen where a man summoned me with a quick wave of a gloved hand, a man I assumed to be the lead detective. He was also one of my interrogators. I’d studied each of their faces as they’d questioned me. Vowed never to forget a single one.

  Only two detectives stood in the kitchen: the lead detective in his late forties and an attractive female, late thirties, dark hair pulled back into a loose chignon. She wore a scarf with skulls on it draped around her neck. Her expression was one of curiosity, not the antagonistic mistrust that lined her partner’s face. I liked her and wondered how much harder she’d had to fight to get such a coveted position with Chicago PD.

  A smattering of small easels with numbers on them sat about the room marking points of interest, and the unmistakable red patterns of spattered blood colored the walls, white cabinets, and stainless gas stove. An island blocked my view of the floor where most of the blood spatters led, but I would’ve bet my lily white there was a large pool behind it.

  My stomach lurched and I swallowed hard. Blood and I didn’t exactly get along. When I’d first decided to try my wares at using my ability to solve crimes, the violence astonished me. And the blood gushing from bodies like a floodtide made my head spin, making every ‘drop,’ as I called them, a little harder than the previous.

  My gaze landed on a pumpkin sitting atop the kitchen counter. A small one meant for decoration. It wore a bright red smile, the shade a perfect match for the blood on the counter next to it. Apparently, whoever did this was an artist.

  No matter, I thought as I drew in a deep breath. I was better.

  “You’re not going to hurl, are you?” the male detective asked, easing away from me. Murphy. I think his name was Murphy.

  I offered him my best glare.

  He smirked. “So,” he said, pointing toward the blood-soaked kitchen, “what we have here is a murder-suicide.” He demonstrated by drawing a circle in the air around the main concentration of blood, as though anyone could mistake it for something other than the aftermath of a very violent event. His dark gray eyes locked with mine. “What do you think?”

  I blinked in surprise. Why would they bring me here? This was some kind of test, yes, but why? They couldn’t have possibly believed what I’d said. I’d buried the truth in a
sea of ridiculous lies. Surely they didn’t believe me. Even if they did, I had two choices: I could refuse to help, thereby proving I was involved with the bombing, or I could help and give them access to a new and improved secret weapon. Did I dare submit, prove my innocence, and lose my soul in the process? Or did I resist and possibly condemn myself to a life behind bars?

  I welded my teeth together and set my jaw. Even if they did believe me, no way was I dropping in front of them like a circus freak. I would not be heckled or belittled or teased. I’d seen what they did to my mother. I’d seen how they treated her, used her repeatedly until she crawled inside a bottle and drowned in it. Seeing the damage they’d done had destroyed me as a child, and I swore I’d never be used like that by anyone for any reason. She’d lived through hundreds of horrible crimes as they happened, and I watched helplessly, unable to fully understand what she was going through.

  Knowing what I know now, I would’ve crawled inside a bottle as well. By the time it was all said and done, by the time they’d broken her and kicked her to the curb, a notorious section of organized crime had picked her up, dusted her off, and used her even more until there was nothing left but a shell of the woman I’d once loved more than air. And these people expected me to follow the same path. Not in this lifetime.

  “You said it yourself,” Murphy added. He had a shaved head and a stocky frame that reminded me of a boxer from a cartoon. And he drank too much if the red-rimmed eyes and swollen features were any indication. His drinking was either because of or the cause of his impending divorce. A pale line where a wedding ring once sat circled his finger. “You said you could see things.” He added air quotes for effect, because his abrasive use of the word “see” wasn’t transparent enough.