Gravebound (Magical Entanglements Book 1) Page 4

  And cement would only temporarily stop Cole.

  Cole tossed his phone aside, smashing it against a nearby gravestone, and slammed his free hand into the planks over and over again. Blood dripped from new gashes cutting across his palm. Sweat beaded along his forehead and his cries became a combination of anguish and determination.

  Delilah pressed her own free hand against his back and rubbed. “I’m sorry.”

  And then she raised her hand to the air and whispered a quick sleeping incantation, recalling a section of the contract Cole had signed earlier that allowed her to manipulate his consciousness at will in the event of an emergency or dangerous situation. “Upon completion of this sentence, the Client will fall asleep per section 3A of the contract.” Wind rushed out of her fingers and slammed into Cole’s chest. He fell backward, unconscious in an instant.

  The kids screamed. Jewel gasped, covering her hand with her mouth. “Why did you—”

  “Because we have to get him out of here and he wouldn’t have gone willingly. Help me drag him back to the car.”

  Jewel’s jaw clenched, but she nodded. “Kids, stay back. Jonah, watch your brothers.” She glanced at Delilah as if she thought Delilah was about to knock her out too, and then grabbed Cole’s legs. Delilah unhooked the cuffs and took his arms. Together they dragged him back to the car.

  They propped Cole into the car and secured his seatbelt.

  Jewel stroked his face from ear to chin. “Please fix him.” She wheeled on Delilah. “And not by hurting him.”

  Delilah gave her a tight smile. “I’ll fix him,” she said, even though it seemed like the more she was learning about his curse, the harder it was going to be to break.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  COLE

  Cole woke up to a gorgeous woman’s fingers digging in the front pocket of his pants and the first thing he thought was: where the hell is the grave? The next thing he thought was a swift mental kick to himself for not noticing the gorgeous woman first. He was both relieved to be sitting in the front seat of a car with a headache pounding to the tune of a concert rave and disappointed by the lack of cold soil smothering him.

  Delilah fished the keys from his front pocket, metal clinking.

  “That’s twice in one day.” Cole grinned at her, giving her his dimpled crooked smile. “How many times do you stick your hands down the pants of someone you’re actually dating?”

  She froze and dropped the keys, the apples of her cheeks turning the most delightful red. “Oh.” She ducked her head, avoiding his eyes. “You’re awake.”

  Cole glanced down at his chest. “And still dressed. Disappointing given the proximity of your hand to my crotch.”

  The blush on her cheeks deepened. She cleared her throat. “We’re at your apartment complex. Jewel gave me the gate code. I want to investigate here until we can get a hold of Britta.”

  Always business first with her. But Cole could fix that. “Another disappointment?” He lifted up his wrist and pursed his lips. “The handcuffs are gone.”

  She glanced longingly at his wrist in a way that made him think maybe she was disappointed too. “We’re thirty miles from the grave, you don’t need them.”

  “Need no. But I did enjoy being handcuffed to you.”

  “I’ll file that information away.” The corners of her lips quirked in a smile. “Like any good lawyer would.” Delilah straightened. “And it’s cute that you’re trying to use your game on me now, when you’re calm and suave, but don’t forget I saw you weep like a baby an hour ago.”

  “I didn’t hear anything you said after you called me suave.” Cole slid out of the car and stood on solid ground, testing the sensation for a moment. The purr of the grave pulsed at the back of his mind, throbbing in tune with his headache. But he felt brave enough to walk without running through traffic to get to it. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For rescuing me. I love a girl who knows how to knock me off my feet.”

  Delilah handed Cole his keys and they breezed up the stairs of the two-story stuccoed building, bypassing the first three apartments until they reached his at the end of the second-floor exterior walkway. He cringed at the sparsely decorated entrance to his apartment, the dirt-stained concrete that greeted people, the trash littering the path toward his next door neighbor’s door and the shouts emanating from inside. Cole winced at the idea of Delilah driving past the leasing office with the security guard who was usually more asleep than awake and the pool that no one ever dared take a dip in thanks to the murky green color.

  When Cole had millions in his possession, he lived in an opulent building with a fountain upfront and an expensive brand name lit up in glowing lights. An apartment building that held the door for guests and occupants. That swiped dust off the baseboards hourly, not monthly. When he’d told Delilah he’d changed his alarm code, what he really meant was he’d downgraded his entire life.

  After sliding his key into the lock but not turning the knob, Cole rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “So, word of warning. My place isn’t the neatest thing in the world. Your office is like a hypoallergenic zone. Mine is…a man cave.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t care.”

  Still, Cole’s stomach squeezed in embarrassment at the idea of her seeing how he lived. No, of her seeing that he lived like this. He used to be neater. Back when he could hire a weekly cleaning service. Back when he cared. Cole pushed open the door, hoping he’d at least put away his dirty underwear from where he usually left them on the floor. Turned out he should have hoped for more because he gasped at the mess inside. Flipped over couch. Cabinets ransacked. Picture frames broken, glass shards carving a path through his living room. His TV hung on the wall at a right angle.

  Delilah blinked at the mess. “Hmm, next time I’ll take your warning much more seriously. I just thought you probably hadn’t vacuumed in a while.”

  Cole’s throat went dry. “Someone broke in.”

  Delilah spun in place, sweeping her eyes over every inch. “Okay, let’s make a list of what was stolen.”

  Cole whipped his head around. He didn’t have much in the way of valuables. He usually blew all his gambling winnings on, well, more gambling. Flat screen TV, check. Sleek laptop and external hard drive? Check. Couch that came from Ikea instead of Pottery Barn? Upside down. A quick sweep of the other rooms racked up more destruction, but as far as he could tell, none of his valuables were gone. Even his safe in the closet sat untouched, stacks of hundreds he kept for emergencies secure inside. “Nothing. Nothing was stolen.”

  Delilah clamped a palm over her mouth, carefully standing in a patch of tile floor free of glass.

  Cole’s gut wrenched at her reaction. This didn’t seem like good news. “Why would someone break in but not steal anything?”

  “To cover their tracks. They must have known you’d hire me. I could have performed a few spells to identify stray DNA or flag evidence.” It was spells like that that made Cole wonder why the FBI didn’t employ witches to their services. Witches would double their productivity.

  Cole groaned. “Come on, maybe the security guard saw something suspicious.” If he was actually awake…

  Unfortunately, he did not appear to be awake now. Delilah paused in front of the security guard in the booth, clearing her throat. The guard’s eyes snapped open, passing over the two of them briefly before landing on the blaring TV. He was moving, sure, but he must not have been alive if Delilah’s leather pants hadn’t made him sit up and pay attention.

  “Did you see anyone suspicious last night between the hours of one and three?” she asked.

  “Nope.” He resumed watching TV.

  Yep. Definitely not alive.

  Cole tilted his head at the security guard. “Do you have surveillance footage?” There was a camera pointing at his apartment but Cole suspected it was just for show, like those people who place alarm company stickers in their windows but never activate an alarm.

  The guy shrugged. “Su
re, but not anything I’m allowed to show you.”

  Delilah waved her palm. “No need. Thanks.”

  She shuffled toward the exit, waving for Cole to follow.

  “Why’d you do that?” he asked. “The surveillance footage might help.”

  “It might, but the security guard wasn’t going to let us view it right then. He’s going to require a little persuasion.”

  “Of the warrant variety?” Cole asked.

  Delilah shot him a devious grin. “Of the magical compulsion variety.”

  Cole raised a brow at her. “And here I thought you were a do-gooder vigilante.”

  “By night,” she corrected. “By day, I’m a lawyer. And lawyers are best at finding loopholes to impossible situations.”

  Cole loved a girl who knew how to bend the rules.

  Within ten minutes, Delilah had doused Cole with more burnt sage and brewed a potion on her electric hot pot connected to her car’s cigarette lighter. She waltzed back to the security guard and held the cup out toward him. “Would you like some chai?” she asked, a huge, beautiful grin on her face.

  The security guard didn’t even squint at her. “No.”

  She dropped the cup. The liquid spread across the table, coating the man’s hands. Delilah gasped, clasping a hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry.”

  But the security guard softened and his eyes glazed over. “It’s all right, Ma’am.”

  Delilah winked at Cole. “Now he’ll grant our every request.”

  “But—he didn’t even drink it,” Cole pointed out.

  She shrugged. “Didn’t need to. Just had to touch it.”

  Cole didn’t believe this would actually work. “Ask him if he’ll actually pay attention from now on,” Cole whispered to Delilah.

  “Yes,” the guard deadpanned and Cole grinned.

  “And clean the pool.”

  “Yes.”

  All right then. This girl was magical.

  Even with the sage, Cole’s leg rattled up and down as they huddled over the small black and white monitor. As the security guard rewound the footage to last night, shots of an empty outdoor corridor showcasing the four upstairs apartments filled the screen, no movement evident. Cole was about to blink away when an object popped into view. Two men’s black shoes, resting right outside his door.

  Delilah gasped. “Rewind it a few seconds.”

  The security guard automatically pressed his finger on the rewind button. Cole counted down the seconds. No shoes. No shoes. No shoes. No shoes. Bam—Shoes! In the frame, Cole’s door opened a minuscule amount and slammed shut again.

  Delilah wore a wicked grin as she turned to Cole.

  They watched for about ten more minutes and the shoes just sat there on the exterior walkway. And then the door opened for the briefest of moments and the shoes disappeared in an instant. It was as if the culprit had turned themselves invisible to get into the complex, but took their shoes off before they entered his apartment to avoid clicking heels on hardwood. The invisibility spell wore off whenever the shoes weren’t being worn.

  “They were men’s shoes.” Delilah tugged Cole away from the operator. “I guess that rules out Britta.”

  “Sean then? My bookie?” Cole asked hopefully, then immediately chastised himself. Sean was dangerous. Last year he broke both Cole’s legs when Cole failed to pay him. And now Cole owed him even more. Sean must have figured out Cole was stashing cash and realized the only way to get it from him was to kill him.

  Delilah gave him a half-hearted expression. “Does Sean have an office? Is there any place we can go talk to him?”

  Cole stiffened. “He’s not exactly a talking kind of guy. If I go in there, he’ll consider it surrender. He’ll take what I owe him, either by breaking my bones or my face.”

  Delilah marched toward the elevators. “Give him part of what you owe then. I saw the safe. You’re hiding money.”

  Cole swallowed hard. “I’m saving up though. If I give it to him—”

  “—If you give it to him you might break the curse and live.”

  His eyelashes fluttered over his eyes and he swallowed past the lump in his throat. “That money…it’s for my nephews. Jonah, the older one, he’s going to seventh grade next year in a rough school with low grades and even lower opportunities. I’m saving up for a private school. It’s thirty grand a year.”

  Delilah’s face turned white. “Okay, then what about…” But she stopped talking. She had no other solution.

  Cole sighed. “I’ll give Sean ten percent. That should hopefully be enough to get him off my back long enough for a meeting with him.”

  Ten percent equaled twenty-five thousand dollars, nearly the exact amount of Jonah’s education for next year. Cole would have to start saving all over again, and this time he only had a few months to do it. Delilah tried not to balk as he shoved stacks of hundred dollar bills into a leather case.

  Cole’s heart was too heavy to notice the song of the grave on the way back to the car. He sat in the front seat, clutching the leather case of money, feeling like he’d ruined Jonah’s life now, too.

  Delilah’s face fell at the sight of him. “What happened to their dad?”

  Cole clenched at the painful memory. “He was killed a few years ago doing a favor for me. He’d gone to talk to my bookie, the guy Sean O’Malley used to work for, to try to persuade him into letting me off easy. Instead he ended up dead. Got punched, hit his head on the way down real hard. Cranial bleed, doctors couldn’t save him.”

  Cole squeezed his hands into tight fists. It was his fault their dad was dead. If Cole hadn’t sent Robert to do the thing he was too chicken to do himself, Robert would still be alive.

  Sean may have thought Cole owed him, but it was Robert Cole felt indebted to. He planned to make it up to him in every way possible, and he would start with giving his nephews a better life.

  Delilah laced her fingers with Cole’s, offering him a consolation smile. “What happened to the bookie?” she said, clearly trying to distract Cole from the more painful memory of Robert.

  “He turned up dead a few weeks later, though doctors never did find the cause. Sean took over his business.”

  As Delilah steered her car along the route the GPS provided, the grave hit him again with full force. The glorious image of the soft earth filled his mind, and his lower lip quaked with a desire so profound, Cole thought he might explode if he didn’t sift his fingers through the soil. He longed to feel the dirt packing on top of his body, crushing his lungs. The moment the light snuffed out would be greater than a thousand orgasms.

  Cole jiggled the doorknob to no avail. He would have to break it then. He arched his arm backward, ready to smash it into the glass. He’d had his fair share of fistfights back in the day, some successful, some not so much. But he didn’t give a shit about his hand. Or his bones. Or his dignity.

  A metallic scrape snapped around his wrist just as he was about to throw his first punch. Delilah tugged hard on the handcuffs and cuffed the second half to herself. “There,” she said. “Just what you wanted. They’re back.”

  But now they were just obstacles. He dug his nails beneath the cuff, trying to slide it over his wrist.

  “Have you ever thought of getting a job?” Delilah asked.

  Cole jiggled the handcuffs as hard as he could and the car swerved dangerously into the other lane.

  Delilah gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

  Cole blinked at her for a moment, confused, until he remembered his purpose. The grave. The only thing that mattered. He clawed harder at the cuff.

  “Favorite sexual position?” she yelled, her voice sounding desperate.

  This time her words seeped through the fog in his brain. The pulse of the grave dulled. A sharp laugh escaped his lips. “Where did that come from?”

  “You didn’t answer the question,” she said.

  Cole knew what she was doing
. Distracting him. And so he knew he needed to play along with all his might. “Two legs wrapped around my neck,” Cole said and he couldn’t help it. The image popped in his mind of Delilah’s long legs resting on his shoulders, her breasts bouncing as he thrust on top of her. This new desire pulsed hard in his abdomen, nearly knocking out the call of the grave.

  “I’m a girl on top fan,” she said before turning off the engine. “We’re here.”

  Ragged breaths pumped from his chest as he blinked at his surroundings. A dilapidated Irish Pub called O’Malley’s was sandwiched between two pizza parlors in a strip mall, the building nearly folding under the weight of its ugliness. One window was boarded up while an open sign glowed in another. Both of Sean’s businesses were seedy.

  Delilah kept the handcuffs on as they maneuvered from the car to the entrance. It was the first time he didn’t mind looking like a convict. If it appeared like someone had caught him, at least it was someone who looked that good in leather. Inside, dim lights forced his eyes to adjust to the cliché ambiance of beer logos decorating the wooden walls in lieu of wallpaper. Waitresses wearing tight-fitting t-shirts scurried from table to table for the patrons eating their burgers and sipping Guinness. When the bartender spotted Cole, he stiffened. A sharp glare and a jut of his chin to an empty table was the only command he offered as he shuffled to the back to get Sean.

  A few of the restaurant customers glanced at Cole strangely thanks to the handcuffs. He just winked at them.

  They settled into the booth, Delilah sitting so close her thigh pressed against Cole’s. She reached into a Ziploc bag in her pocket and pulled out a handful of what looked like sugar, cupping it in her palm.

  “What’s that?” Cole asked, nodding to her palm.

  “Shhh.” Delilah blew the powder toward the empty bench across from them. It hung in the air, giving off a slight fog, like viewing someone through a cloud of smoke.

  A moment later a large man wearing sneakers—and a cast that covered his whole leg—limped over to their table on crutches. His potbelly jiggled and age spots lined his face from all the cigars Cole knew he smoked. The bench sighed under his weight when he sat down. The smoky powder engulfed him but Sean paid no attention. He was too busy pointing angrily at his cast.