“You used a soul spell on me. You told me to stay out of your life. When I figured out the damn spell, I did look for you, kept looking for you, but I had to keep doing my job.”

“And it was your job that finally brought you back to me. This.” She made a vague gesture toward the circle.

“I had to have a reason to pull you back into my life. If I’d showed up and said, ‘Hey, Ruby, I just want to take up where we left off, even though you seemed kinda pissed the last time I saw you,’ how would that have worked?”

He was right, but he was also wrong, the same way she was both right and wrong. She struggled with her wildly vacillating emotions, which seemed as hard to pin down as the range of his emotions over the past few minutes. “You acted like you hated me, back in the cottage. But then you come out here and knock him around. What was that, marking territory? I can’t stand the bitch, but she’s my bitch?”

“Ruby.” He caught her shoulders, hauled her up to her toes. “Stop it. Love and hate, it doesn’t matter. They’re all in the mix when it comes to the way I feel about you. Yeah, I’m old as dirt. I know a lot of things about magic and the way the Earth works, but when it comes to you, I’m a man. And when I saw him touching you, hurting you, that was all that mattered.”

Her anger deflated at his weary, frustrated honesty. His grip dropped, slid around her waist. After a hesitation, he dipped his fingers back in under denim to stroke over that marked spot again. When she moved her hand to his arm, trying to stop him, he made a noise, shaking his head, so she put her hand uncertainly on his chest as he traced the scar. “What did he use?”

She didn’t want to tell him, but she couldn’t give him the truth on what really mattered, so she’d give him this, no matter how shameful the words felt in the light of day. “A knife blade, heated by flame. Then he…. he used his belt buckle over it.”

Derek’s eyes darkened. Ruby wanted to look away, but couldn’t. “You wanted him to hurt you,” he said.

“Yes. I…. I begged him for it, most times. Derek…. I’m sorry. I told you, it’s just…. It’s too late. I can’t go back to being what you want me to be.”

“It’s not about that, Ruby. If you were what you wanted to be, I’d feel it, know it, because I know who you are. I know your heart, girl; don’t you realize that? Your soul, too. I know what you like and don’t like, what makes you afraid, what makes you laugh….” His lips tightened. “There’s an important chunk of something I don’t know, but what I don’t know are the specifics. I know the important part. You made a choice, and in your heart, you know it was the wrong one, but you couldn’t turn away from it, and now you’re losing a little bit more of yourself to the Darkness every day.

“Whatever that choice was, it was so important that you can’t turn your back on it, so all you can do is try to slow it down, keep the Darkness appeased and from clawing more of the guts out of your soul at an even faster pace. You’re hanging from a cliff edge, Ruby, and you don’t know whether it’s best to let go and have done with it, or keep hanging on.”

He was so accurate, so dead-on right, words stuck in her throat. But he wasn’t finished. His blue gaze held hers, burning her down to her soul.

“The reason I’m here now, why I’m not going anywhere, is because I’m the one kneeling on that ledge. All you have to do is reach up, and I’ll take your hand and help you back up.”

He gave her an admonishing squeeze, let her go so abruptly she swayed from the lack of support. Stepping back, he gave her a hard look. “That’s your friend talking, the man who loves you. But here’s a message from the man who knows you are his bitch. His sharp-tongued, stubborn, amazingly strong and talented, wildly fragile….” He shook his head, unable to say it again.

“He’s right about one thing. You do need a guy with a strong hand, one who makes things clear and doesn’t fuck around with being PC or leave it in shades of gray. So here it is, crystal-clear.”

He jerked his head toward the driveway, where Mikhael had disappeared. “You let him come anywhere near you again, I’ll kill him, Ruby. Same goes for any man you let touch what’s mine. As long as I can tell from the look in your eyes, in your response to my touch, that your heart, soul, mind and body are mine, I don’t share.”

On that astounding and chilling statement, one she didn’t doubt at all, he turned and left her.

HE DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER STRIDING OUT OF SIGHT. ONE moment he was there, and then the next he was gone. Ruby had no idea where he’d gone, but based on the emotions vibrating off him, she expected he was going somewhere he could pound on something for a while. Hopefully something inert, like a punching bag.

Wearily, she moved away from the tire tracks and disturbed gravel in the circle drive. She made it as far as one of the natural areas; then her knees buckled. Sinking down on a whimsical concrete pig that had the breadth of a sea chest, she stared at a quaint grouping of azalea bushes around a cheerfully bubbling fountain. Linda liked lawn art, for there was an array of stone woodland creatures placed throughout the heavy layer of pine-straw mulch. Squirrels, birds and one hedgehog. More concrete pigs.

She rubbed a hand over her face. She was too tired to cry. All that was left to do was pack. Derek said he wanted her gone, and though he might feel differently after he settled down, he was right. As much as she hated to think of him with Linda, maybe that was tit for tat, right?

No, not really, since performing the Great Rite was far different from him going off and screwing some woman for release when Ruby wasn’t handy, but maybe she could think of it that way and the sting would be less. Yeah, right.

She struggled for that lullaby in her mind, found the words. Closing her eyes, she folded her arms against herself, rocked back and forth on the pig’s broad back as she hummed, trying to find that spot of peace, the groove that made everything okay.

A soothing hand on her shoulder, and Linda was there. Ruby didn’t open her eyes, not even when Christine put the ice pack on her swelling cheek and Linda stroked the hair away from the other one. They picked up the lullaby, though, humming it with her, recognizing it as the catharsis it was. She did open her eyes when she felt hands on her feet, sliding off her sneakers. Jocelyn was there with a basin of fragrant, steaming water. As Ruby watched, unresisting, Jocelyn guided her feet into it, began to massage them beneath the water. Oh Goddess, what a sensation. What…. what were they doing?

“Before the Great Rite, we cosset the coven member who will be fulfilling the Goddess’s role,” Christine explained in a calm tone. “We’ll give you a full bath and massage, leave you to meditate in a sacred place on Linda’s property with the proper aromatics to help you get to an elevated state, but we thought you— Ruby, the woman— needed this right now.”

“It’s something we do, when one of our coven members is sick at heart,” Linda said quietly. “When she needs to know that the Lord and Lady understand all things, and that if we just open ourselves to Them, it will all work out. And that it’s never too late to do that. You don’t even need the will to do it. Just the desire can form a crack inside of you, a crack They can widen, if you can give Them time, help you find the will.”

Ruby swallowed. Once, soon after her mother died, she’d gone to a masseuse who did laying-on-hands as part of her offering. She would offer up the impressions she received only if the participant wished her to do so; otherwise, she simply gave the massage. But Ruby had asked, curious.

I see you, only you look different. You are in a beautiful, serene place. A body of water, green grass, a cave lit by firelight. There are other women there, like you. And that version of you looks up at yourself now through the Veil, and says ‘It’s going to be all right. We’ll be here. It will all work out.’

“What if you can’t afford even the crack?” Ruby said, swallowing the tremor in her voice. “He doesn’t want me here, Linda. He wants to do the Rite with you. My work here is done.”

“No. No, it’s not.” Linda shook her head. “You and Derek may know a great deal more about flashing lights, bells and whistles when it comes to magic, but there’s no denying what I’ve been feeling since yesterday. The Lord and Lady want the two of you to do this Great Rite. And I don’t care what you or Derek Stormwind says. You can argue with each other or me all you wish, but you don’t argue with Them. So you both do that Rite tonight, or it doesn’t get done, and the fault stays dangerously weakened. That worries me, but not as much as going against what I know is meant to be.”

Jocelyn’s capable fingers were massaging her arches. Ruby wasn’t sure what to do as Linda slid her arm around her back, giving her support as Christine adjusted the ice. “So you just relax. We’re going to pamper you this afternoon. And maybe if you can relax some, get some real rest, the answers will come to you.”

This was the type of thing coven sisters did for one another, whether they were a coven of three or a coven of twelve. It made her miss Raina and Ramona so much. When Mikhael had walked into the cottage, she’d been focused on how to get through the Rite without exposing too much of herself. But Linda reminded her now that the Rite was a conduit for the Lord and Lady, and the Lord and Lady already knew all her secrets. She would serve Them capably, as she knew she could, without having to reveal herself to others. But perhaps, as Linda said, the answers would still come.

The pain and grief had clouded everything for so long. She hadn’t wanted to feel anything, which she realized was a big part of why she’d sent Derek away. And now she couldn’t stop feeling.

“We need to check on Theo. Can we do that first?”

“Absolutely. Maybe we’ll give him a bath and massage, too.” This from Marie, with a hint of a teasing smile.

“Heck, maybe when Derek gets back, we’ll strip him down and see what we can do for him.” Linda elbowed Ruby.