by Fiona Zedde
I touch the spot where she tapped me, curling my fingers over the skin to try and prolong the sensation. Her eyes dip down to watch the movement, and I feel her soften just the tiniest bit.
“I’m only being myself, love,” I tell her softly. “Isn’t that what we agreed the last time we had this discussion?”
Mai opens her mouth to comment, but Caressa cuts her off.
“Well, it’s not like Xóchitl is that nice a person,” her cousin says, buttery smooth and cool.
This is a warning. And I should pay more attention. There’s a hint of something from Caressa that makes my neck prickle. But Mai is here and angry. I can barely focus on the world as it is when we’re fighting like this. Especially when all I want is to pull her into my arms and out of this garden of snakes, tell her that none of this other stuff matters. Just us.
But she wouldn’t agree to leave with me and so I’d be left alone, stuck on the outside of her world with my splintered piece of our love.
“What did you say?” Mai’s mildly reproving look abruptly shifts from me to Caressa.
“You know it’s true, Mai,” Caressa says with a click of her tongue and then a smile to make it all seem like a joke. “This is a dangerous person you brought into our lives. All this time the enforcers have been telling us that Ethan was the Absolution Killer, but we’ve had the real killer here all along.” The edges of her normally flirtatious smile are sharp.
Panic flares in Mai’s eyes, then fury. At the same time, Abi gasps and takes a jerking step away from me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Caressa.” A hint of betrayal burns the edges of Mai’s words.
“It’s okay, Mai.” The new sharpness to Caressa’s smile could cut glass. “You don’t have to lie for her. It’s not something you’re good at anyway.”
What the hell?
“Is this true, Mai?” Abi confronts her sister in a whirl of brightly colored cotton. Her wide eyes flit between me and Mai.
“We have a monster in our midst.” Caressa jumps in before Mai can speak. Her voice is loud like she’s shouting to the entire city of Atlanta. Making sure that the whole clan of power-rich Redstones is able to hear the damaging truth she’s dropped like an atomic bomb in the place where it would do the most damage.
Mandaia Redstone is suddenly at Caressa’s side, looking spring-appropriate in a pale pink dress. “What’s happening here?”
Everyone else in the little arbor is paying attention. Subtly, they begin to creep closer to us. Well, maybe not so subtly.
“This is who killed Uncle Stephen, not Ethan.” Caressa gestures to me with a languid wave of her hand.
Already narrowing with suspicion, Mandaia’s amber eyes go flat and hard. After a scouring look at me then Mai, she turns to Caressa. “Do you know this for sure?”
My mind skitters to the last time I saw Caressa. She was all smiles and helpfulness when she dropped me and Mai off at the condo.
What happened between then and now?
How does she know about the Absolution Killer?
She doesn’t seem the smartest one in the bunch, and I’ve been careful not to let Absolution out of the box since Ethan was arrested for her kills.
“I’m very sure.” A tiny smile curls up the corners of Caressa’s lips. She looks smug. “Xóchitl and Mai were talking about it, and I recorded everything. I can play it for you if you like.”
She heard us talking? Where? Then the evening I last saw Caressa rushes back to me. Every word Mai and I spoke to each other in what I thought was the privacy of her damn living room.
When this is over, Caressa is dead.
Mai’s face is a careful blank, but I can see the subtle tension at the corners of her mouth.
Taking careful steps away from me and Mai, Caressa keeps talking. “I actually have the tape right here. We might as well have a listen.” She reaches into her delicate little purse and pulls out her phone. The conversation is evidently all cued up to go because all she does is tap the phone’s screen a couple of times before Mai’s recorded voice spills out.
“I hate it’s so easy for you to kill, Xóchitl. Especially when you took your revenge as the Absolution Killer. It’s subhuman.”
A tap of Caressa’s finger cuts off the audio. “There you have it,” she says. “My undeniable proof.”
A rattling of anger rises up from different corners of the arbor, but even with the rage twisting her face after listening to her own daughter confirm Caressa’s accusation, Mandaia ignores it.
“How and why did you get this information, Caressa?” she rasps.
Suddenly, Caressa doesn’t look so certain. “I-I’ve been working with Ethan to…to help clear his name,” she stammers but quickly gains control over herself. “I know he isn’t the Absolution Killer and I want everyone else to know, too.”
“Go on,” Mandaia says with a motion of her chin. Waves of fire rise and fall in her eyes.
“I’ve had somebody following Mai at the school where she works. At first, I-I thought it was fitting punishment to get her fired. With rumors and that kind of thing.” At Mai’s hiss and the audible pop of her clenched fists, Caressa backs away. “You can’t have the life you want when Ethan is facing execution, Mai.” Caressa shakes her head, thick and shining hair slithering over her shoulders. “The world isn’t fair, I know that. But it makes me sick to see you in love and happy while Ethan stands to lose his life.” With each word that drips from her lips, Caressa becomes more and more calm. “I wanted that school to fire you and ruin everything you have in the human world.” Caressa slips her phone back into her purse and turns back to Mandaia, a look of utter confidence on her face. “She deserves to be ruined after she helped to pin the murders her lover committed on my Ethan.”
My Ethan, huh?
“I didn’t hear your voice on that recording,” Mandaia says to me, her own calm absolute but a sign of a rage more powerful than anything Caressa could ever express. “Is any of this true?”
“All of this is true,” Caressa insists. “You heard her say it.”
Mandaia and I both ignore her.
“Only a few months ago, Ethan tried to kill Mai. I’m sure you and your little boy”—I tilt my head toward a glowering Cayman—“saw that much.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Well, that’s the only answer you’re getting out of me.” Evenly balancing my weight on the balls of my feet, I prepare for the physical confrontation that’s as inevitable as my next breath.
Mandaia slips off her pretty pink jacket and drops it on the ground behind her. “Believe me, I can get more out of you, Xóchitl.” She sneers my name. Power crackles around her like static electricity, and, although nothing about her changes physically, she suddenly seems two feet taller. “When I’m done with you, you’ll be pouring out all of your secrets and begging me to stop the pain.”
Pain? A laugh bubbles out of my throat, bitter and unamused. What kind of pain could she inflict that having my parents then my sister ripped out of my life haven’t already brought?
My inner fire rushes through me, and a haze of heat distorts Mandaia’s image in front of my eyes. Then everything gets clearer, becomes as sharp as a knife edge about to taste blood. If they think I’ll be easy prey, then they have no idea who they’re dealing with.
A powerful wind surges up around Mandaia, and the grass begins to frantically grow around my feet, twisting to grab at my ankles. Shit! I leap back and bump into an immovable body. Cayman. Then he yelps at the same moment the smell of singed flesh and burnt grass rises in the air. Bet he won’t touch me again before thinking twice.
From the corner of my eye, I see a swarm of thick, thorny vines heavy with red roses fly toward me. Then freeze barely an inch from Mai’s face.
She stands in front of me, her arms spread wide, her hands repl
aced by long, wicked-looking blades.
“I’m sorry, Mother.” With the hem of her yellow dress whipping frantically in her mother’s breeze, she matches Mandaia, calm for calm. Both their gazes spark like the blazing red center of a forge. “But you’ll have to go through me first.”
Shock nearly drops me where I stand.
Chapter 20
This isn’t Mai’s fight. I can’t let her pretend that it is, no matter how much I want to.
“Step aside, love.” Despite the blood thundering in my ears, the urge to crush her to me in gratitude, I gently push her away. Or at least I try to, but she doesn’t move.
I’m not going anywhere. Her words unfurl in my mind. A fist squeezes my heart tight and a syrupy gladness trickles through me. She’s let me back into her mind. I try not to grin like a fool, but from the murderous look on her mother’s face, I’ve failed miserably.
The vines thick with vicious thorns twist and thrash in the air just in front of Mai’s face, snakes hungry for a kill.
“Yes, Mai. Step aside and let me deal with this murderer. She is nothing to betray your family over.” The air quivers around Mandaia. Her clawed fingers tense at her sides as if she’s ready to rip the world apart to get to me.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” Mai growls.
The wolves are circling. Redstones creeping closer with every flash of Mandaia’s eyes. All it takes is for her to give the signal and they’ll be on top of me. But that also means they’ll be on top of Mai. A coldness grips my belly at the thought. She can’t become a casualty of this war I have with her family.
A few quick footsteps pull me from the protection of Mai’s body. The thorns thrash through the air toward me.
“No!” Lightning quick, Mai slashes away the barbed thigh-sized vines before they can connect. Harmless pieces of green, wet with sap, drop to the grass. “Mother, stop!”
Her mother only growls and presses forward. At least with her body. Her vines twist and growl restlessly in the air above her, the sound of the thick trunks rubbing together like the hissing of snakes.
My chest shudders with the frantic pounding of my heart. “Mandaia, you caused this,” I shout. I watch the thick vines twitching far too close to Mai. “Ethan Redstone is a spoiled monster. Stephen Redstone was a beast who preyed on his own kind. When you tried to drag Mai into the hearing to testify for Ethan, you only proved that you’re a monster just like them.”
“It’s not like that!” Abi’s voice rises suddenly above the cacophonous sound of the vines. “My family is being pressured to free Ethan. They don’t want to.” Her voice drops off. “At least, I don’t think they do.”
“Don’t tell them anything, Abi!” Cayman shouts from behind me.
“What?” But Mai jerks part of her attention to her sister, not completely taking her eyes off Mandaia. “Are you sure?”
“I…was going to tell you once you got here, but then you seemed so sad. I just didn’t want to make you feel worse.” She shrugs helplessly with the beginning of tears in her voice.
“Who exactly is they? What’s going on?” Mai’s hands are still bladed and deadly, but they drop away from the threat as she looks between Abi and their mother.
“Now’s probably not the time, babe,” I say. The Redstones circle closer to the soundtrack of the hissing thorny vines. “Your family is out for blood and I don’t think they’ll stop with mine.”
“We don’t hurt our own.” Cayman’s furious lie is as obvious as his ridiculous taste in clothes.
“Mai, let’s just go.”
“Do you think we’ll let you leave just like that?” Cayman snarls. He’s closer to Mai than he deserves to be, and my muscles twitch with the urge to kick his knee out.
“Mai.” I touch the unyielding small of her back. “Leave with me. Now.”
The vines hiss and twist and shake even more, the noise of their agitation rising and expanding in the arbor.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Mandaia gestures with a tilt of her head to the Redstones surrounding me, the enclosed garden, and the host at the gate smiling as if he has more important things to worry about than the bloodbath about to happen.
Mandaia’s overconfidence is hilarious. They don’t know their hold on me is like water in an outstretched hand.
“Mai?”
“I don’t want them to hurt you, but I think they will.”
Cayman and the others move restlessly, pushing closer, crushing the grass underfoot and stirring up the scent of green. It obviously pisses them off that we’re ignoring them. The air crackles with tension. Any moment now, they’re going to pounce and rip us apart.
“Mai, trust me now like you did before.”
“I never stopped trusting you,” she says.
“Good.” One quick step forward and I’m pressed flat against her back. Then I teleport us out of the garden of snakes. The cool space of her apartment slowly appears around us. The sunlight. Her furniture. My Aztec blanket draped over the couch.
Once the cold of the shift has passed, Mai looks up at me with surprise swimming in her eyes. The blades below her elbows transform once again into arms. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I know.”
“But…”
“Remember when Ethan appeared out of nowhere that afternoon, the first day you invited me back to your place for sex?”
Incredibly, despite the chaos and danger we just left behind, her cheeks darken with color. “Yes, how could I forget that?” Images from that afternoon unfurl in her mind like a beautiful ribbon. Our meeting in the street by arranged accident. My hand on hers while her cousin, Ethan, lurked around us. Then later, in her bed. Both of us breathless, clumsy with the uncertainty of new lovers.
“Only my hand on you prevented him from teleporting you off that street. As you know, sometimes like powers can cancel each other out in a confrontation.”
Brow furrowed, she steps back from me. “I wish you’d trust me with things like this, Xóchitl.”
“I do, Mai.” How can she doubt how much I trust her when all I’ve done the past few months is show her just that? The backs of my fingers brush her cheek. “I trust you more than any lover who’d ever claimed to want me for more than the things I can do. I—”
The sudden throb of the space being disrupted cuts me off the same instant a horde of Redstones descends into the room. They flood from the kitchen, from the bedroom, through the window. From everywhere like rats.
“Mai!” I shout her name just as rough hands grip me. A howl tears from my throat, my skin heats, and whoever touched me screams along with me, but that only lasts a moment before something latches onto my neck. I shrug it off, moving too quickly for most to see.
Someone tears Mai from my arms and flings her across the room. A framed photo of Mai and her sister tumbles to the floor and shatters. Another Redstone grabs Mai’s arms and feet and pin her to the wall.
“Don’t let her get hurt!” Someone shouts. Probably her mother.
But it’s too late for that. Even through the haze of fire in front of my eyes, I can see the pain and fury in Mai’s gaze. Her mouth flies open, and her eyes squeeze shut. She screams my name again, and barbs erupt from her arms, her fingernails, sharp and dangerous, glinting silver and chrome in the light. Everything about her is sharp and painful.
The Redstones are everywhere.
I keep my body in motion, bouncing off the air like a ping pong ball, past their hands, trying to get away and hurt as many of them as possible at the same time. My entire body is a sizzling furnace. They touch me and they burn.
“Grab her!”
But they’re making a mistake if they think I’m as easy as all that. Hands latch onto me. A woman screams as her fingers, suddenly super-heated from my skin, sizzle and fall off. Something sharp cuts down my side and burns a thousand times
more than fire. The flavor of blood explodes in my mouth as I bite down on my tongue to keep the scream inside.
But I don’t go down.
A somersault over the couch and I’m flinging myself across the room, knocking over a vase, the television. Glass shatters, and pieces dig into my skin. Already I’m healing, my skin pushing out the pieces of glass, getting rid of anything that doesn’t belong.
“She’s too fast.”
“Slow her down, then!”
Cayman is suddenly there. Watching from a corner of the room. He doesn’t touch me, but he doesn’t have to. He could break my bones with just one look. My only hope is to move too fast for him to properly see me. I leap around the ruined room, slipping from hand to hand, dodging lances of ice and stinging barbs that fly through the room, burning everyone who touches me.
“Take her!” A breathless order. “Alive or dead, I don’t care. Just make sure Mai isn’t hurt.”
That word again. Hurt.
It means so much more than they think it does. The Redstones think only they have the right to hurt Mai and that this pain, mostly emotional, isn’t as real as being punched in the face or abandoned to a horrific childhood.
A scream rings out.
Mai! Where is she?
Stupid. I shouldn’t have brought her here. That was stupid and predictable. But Cayman and the others followed us sooner than I planned.
“I’m going to gut you!” A pretty girl with bright lipstick suddenly appears in front of me, a chair raised over her head. She slams the wooden chair toward me, but I easily dodge it.
The place is chaos. Broken furniture and cracked walls. Blood in deep red splashes across the floors. The siren of Mai’s screams rattles the apartment. Three people hold her pinned to the wall, all doing their best to avoid the blades sprouting and slashing all over her body.
I have to get her out of here. Damn her family.
Twisting in mid-air, still untouchable, I head toward her, my hands burning and ready to incinerate all three members of her loving family keeping her prisoner.
“Stop her!”