by May Dawson
I closed my eyes as satisfaction flowed through every muscle that had been tense, as my body fell languid and exhausted against the wall, his arm still holding my hips against his. He was still buried deep inside me as he gently kissed the bruises he had left on my throat.
I twisted around in his arms, then looked up to study his face. That face might not be Silas’ own face, with the cruelly perfect mouth and the hard angles of his face and those cold gray eyes. But this face was becoming sweet to me too.
“I can’t tell who you really are. How much of you is Echo, and how much of you is Silas…”
He leaned his forehead against mine, his chest still heaving with desire, and closed his eyes as if the question pained him.
In the silence, all I could hear was our mingled breaths, our panting in time.
“I can’t tell you that either,” he finally said, cupping my cheek lightly with his hand. “But I can tell you that whoever the hell I am, I’d die for you if you needed me.”
I pressed my hand over his lips. “Don’t say that. You don’t get to ever leave me again.”
He stroked his fingers over my hair, tucking it back behind my ear. “You have to know, I’m never coming home with you, Maddie.”
My eyes widened, and I was about to tell him he was wrong, he had to be wrong, I needed him.
But he added, “The wolves would eat my cat.”
I stared at him, perplexed, for a second, then slapped his chest. “You’re messing with me, right? You impossible jackass.”
His lips tilted up, but his eyes looked shadowed.
Before I could press him anymore, he grabbed my biceps and pushed me gently back away from him. “Looks like we’ve got company. You might want to get some clothes on.”
His gaze took me in, his lips quirking, then said, “Or you could fight like that. I don’t mind. It could make a very good distraction.”
I shook my head. “All that military strategy you learned at your scary academy, and that’s what you come up with?”
Despite the banter that flew between us as I hurriedly pulled my clothes back in order, I couldn’t stop obsessing over what he’d said.
I couldn’t lose him again.
Chapter Forty-Three
While museum workers loaded the truck, Echo and I kept an eye on the city around us, watching for shifters who might be here to steal the pieces of Cain’s shield too. We had to be ready for anything.
When the truck was almost loaded up, Echo and I jogged down the stairs to meet Alice.
As we joined her in the alleyway, Alice sliced her palm open with her knife. She hissed a breath of pain as she anointed the dead bug.
When she blew her breath onto the bug, some of her life force washed over it. The puff of air blew the fly off her palm and sent it soaring through the air.
She closed her eyes as her lips moved with the words of her spell, focusing as she guided the fly to the truck. The fly buzzed across the expanse between us and the truck, then wedged itself into the door.
“We’ve got it,” Alice said, opening her eyes. “Go.”
Echo glanced at the driver, then back at me. “You should have worn that cute little schoolgirl skirt of yours.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I told him. He was in my way, so I put my palm on his chest and pushed him against the wall, out of my way. His lips arched in a faint smile as I sashayed past him into the road.
“Excuse me,” I called to the man who was just swinging up into the driver’s seat. “I’m lost. Can you tell me how to get to the Natural History Museum?”
“It’s closed now,” he said skeptically, but he still lingered, his gaze sweeping up my body before he dragged his eyes to my face.
“I know. A friend asked me to meet her there and I lost my phone.” I bit my lower lip, rolling my eyes at myself. No matter how skeptically he regarded me, he still didn’t close the door between us.
I needed to get close enough to draw blood.
“Oh, are you all right?” I frowned at him when I was almost to his door. “It looks like you cut yourself.”
“What?” he asked, looking down at his shirt and jeans and a belt buckle the size of a soda can.
“Here,” I said, catching his wrist. My thumb stroked over the skin above his watch, and a cut opened across his skin. Blood swelled under my touch, and I stroked my thumb through it. “See?”
He snatched his wrist away from me, studying the bloody cut with a frown. But he had no way of knowing magic was real, so although he was suspicious about why I was there, he would never believe I had cut him.
“I think I’ve got a Band-Aid,” I said, rummaging through my purse as if I hadn’t planned this carefully. I plucked one of the princess Band-Aids out of the tin I’d bought on our way here and handed it over to him carefully.
“Thanks,” he said, his voice amused.
“I might get lost really easily, but at least I’m useful.” I smiled back at him.
“The natural history museum is just across the green,” he said, pointing toward the front of the museum. “There are maps posted.”
“Silly me,” I said, twining my blond hair around one finger. I hid my other hand behind my back; I needed his blood for my spell. “I’m a natural blond. Can’t help it.”
“Good luck,” he said, his voice friendly, and guilt spread through my gut. But as much I hated helping the Day, I intended to make sure no one got hurt tonight.
I headed toward the front of the museum. When the truck pulled past me, I waved. The driver waved back, and I caught a glimpse of the pink Band-Aid on his wrist.
A minute later, Echo and Alice rolled up in the car. I climbed into the backseat. The cat sat next to me, and she regarded me with judgmental golden eyes.
“I barely nicked him,” I told the cat. “I didn’t really do any damage.”
“Yeah, we’ll see how this next part goes,” Echo said under his breath.
“I’ve got it,” I promised.
Alice had been practicing her fly spell for a while. Meanwhile, over the past week Winter had taught me a tricky spell that allowed me to control the movement of someone’s body with a blood magic spell. It was something else I could tell Alice was jealous of, even though I had mixed feelings about learning Winter’s ways.
Wolves hated blood magic. For good reason. I pushed away the swell of dark memories from my childhood.
Completing this mission would please Winter and ingratiate me more into the Day.
Let Alice think I was desperate to make Daddy happy. I had my own mission that mattered far more, and it was worth the cost.
Sometimes when guilt prickled through my gut at what I was doing with the Day, I thought about my niece and nephew, and the way they curled up against my chest when I picked one of them up. It was cliché, but I couldn’t get enough of their sweet faces, of their little hands that curled around my fingers, of trying to make them laugh. They were so tiny and innocent. I stood between them and the Day.
“Step one was easy enough,” Alice said.
“Shush,” Echo ordered. It began to rain, big fat drops that splattered across the windshield, and he turned on the wipers. “Don’t jinx us.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “We’re witches. We’re the ones who make the jinxes.”
The three of us followed the truck out of city limits, onto the highway. The rain began to fall harder, in driving sheets that raced across our windshield and blurred the headlights of oncoming traffic.
The truck took an exit onto a country road, heading east.
“As planned,” Alice said.
“Alice.” Echo rubbed his long fingerers across his forehead in exasperation, as if he really believed in jinxes.
Wait, maybe he did. I leaned forward between the seats. “What exactly is going through your head right now?”
He glanced into the rearview mirror, his gray eyes meeting mine. “Speaking of right now. Don’t you have something you’re supposed to be doing?”
Alice said, “Don’t feel bad, Maddie. He’s never any fun.”
Echo’s lips pulled at the corners as if he were fighting a smile, reminding me of what we’d done earlier. Echo definitely could be fun.
I murmured the words of my spell. Using the driver’s blood, I slipped into his mind. No one could read anyone else’s mind—thankfully, if Winter could read my mind I’d likely have already joined the Everly sisters—but I could influence what he did.
Meanwhile, Alice incanted steadily in Latin, working her spell on the tires that she’d weakened earlier. The lights of a passing car illuminated her, with her hands raised and her eyes closed, her lips moving steadily as she murmured the words of her spell and her voice began to rise.
The tires blew suddenly. The truck listed to one side, then slammed on its brakes.
The truck tilted on the embankment as it came abruptly to a stop at the side of the road.
When the driver got out of the car to fix the tire—without radioing in the mishap as he should’ve, thanks to my fingers digging into his brain—I forced him to wander off into the woods. I sent him far enough that by the time I released his brain, we’d be gone.
With part of my attention fixed on controlling the driver, I could barely focus on what was going on around me in real life. My vision blurred between what he saw, and what was in front of me. I grew dizzy and hot, as if I were about to be sick, and I grabbed for the door to steady myself.
Echo pulled ahead of the truck and parked in front of it, allowing for a quick get-away. Since I was loopy, when he got out of the car he came around to my side. He caught my bicep in his hand and pulled me along with him.
“Why are you always so rough, Echo?” Alice asked, clearly misreading how I felt about that.
“Why are you always so sweet, Alice?” he asked, his tone hard and unreadable before he winked at her.
That sexy wink was mine, damn it. She stared at him, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. He left her flustered, uncertain how to respond when he was so hot and cold. I went to smack him, but I wasn’t completely in control of my own limbs while I worked someone else’s like a puppet. The driver stumbled in the woods, face-planted, and I winced. Sorry, sorry. My jealousy was a hazard. I helped the driver struggle back up to his knees, then climb up to his feet.
Echo magicked the lock on the back of the truck, then threw it open. The creak of the door seemed to split open the quiet night.
“We have to hurry,” Alice said urgently.
“And here I was going to stop and pick out some art for my room,” he said. “Maybe dress up that closet for my pet rabbit.”
“Oh, fuck you,” I managed, with what attention I could divert.
“You can’t work a spell and come up with a decent comeback at the same time, can you?” Echo asked. “Hopeless.”
I stayed by the back of the truck, because I would only get in the way, while Echo boosted Alice up onto the high floor of the truck, then jumped up easily himself. The two of them searched through the truck.
“Catch,” Echo called, cocking back his arm to throw something at me.
“Don’t you throw anything at me,” I said, too late as he hurled something through the air. I raised my hands, but it bounced off my arm and fell to the ground. “I can’t catch. I’m—”
“Klutzy?”
“Working.” I knelt to scoop up whatever priceless item he’d tossed at me. My depth perception was off, parts of my vision shadowed. I saw through the driver’s eyes with my right eye and saw my own surrounding with my left. I tried to squint so I could see the glittering object better as I picked it up, resting my hand on the back of the truck to guide myself back up to my feet.
The thing I’d picked up was shiny, heavy… “You threw a crown at me?” I demanded.
“You try to do something nice for a girl,” Echo said. “Also, it’s not a crown. It’s a tiara.”
“You’re not exactly doing something nice, Echo. You’re stealing it.”
Echo scoffed. “You focus on the most inconsequential details.”
“You should get Alice something too,” I mouthed at him.
I snapped my mouth shut as she turned around.
“I think I found it,” she said, yanking a piece of paper out of the plastic attached to a crate, then holding up the sheet that identified the contents of the box.
The two of them were using a crowbar to break apart the crate when headlights came up behind us, fast. As soon as they started to brake, I shouted to Echo, but he was already jumping down beside me.
He offered Alice a hand down, catching her as she stumbled on her way down. She carried the artifact crushed to her chest.
“Car, now,” he told us both firmly. “I’ll take care of this.”
I broke the connection with the driver. A sudden headache so intense that it blurred my vision drove through my brain like an ice pick, and I fell heavily to my knees as my stomach threatened to upend itself. Winter promised the side effects would fade with practice, but so far, this spell sucked.
Echo reached down and grabbed my bicep, yanking me up to my feet. “Go.”
“Don’t be a hero,” I snapped. I grabbed his arm, towing him with me toward the car. Since I was the first one to reach the car, I threw myself into the driver’s seat.
The car slammed our trunk. We were all jolted forward. As I slammed my foot down on the accelerator, there was a sickening sound of tires spinning and metal tearing. Then our car flew down the road at a breakneck pace.
“Oh my god,” Echo muttered. “You’re as bad a driver as I expected.”
The other car chased us around hairpin turns and open stretches, trying to get alongside us so they could force us off the road. Then I heard a pop, pop, pop. Someone was trying to take out our tires.
“Stop complaining,” I snapped. “You’re lucky I’m driving. I’m pretty experienced at car chases.”
“From what I heard, you almost died in your last car chase. Drove into the water,” he shot back.
A bullet caught a tire, and the pop turned into an explosive sound as the tire blew.
Echo swore. “Should’ve done it my way from the beginning.”
“You’re so goddamn cocky.”
His fingers wove through the air, and his eyes closed as he worked his spell. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Sparks flew as I drove on the rim, but then the tires re-inflated. The car suddenly stopped tilting to one side.
“Look at you,” I said. “You’re so useful!”
“Yeah, that’s why I get to be cocky.” He half-stood to pop open the moon roof. The wind caught the square of glass he removed and whipped it back into the windshield of the car that was riding our ass. Their windshield cracked, one long crack down the center, but didn’t fracture.
Yet.
I grabbed the hem of his shirt with one hand to steady him as he braced himself in the moon roof. He ducked as they shot at him, but he still managed to stick his head back in the car to yell at me, “Both hands on the wheel!”
“Focus!”
He straightened, cursing. I wasn’t sure if those expletives were for the bullets flying toward him or my driving.
He threw his hands out, blasting magic at them. Magic flared across his palms, then shot out at them, almost knocking their car off the road.
“Get us around the corner and let me out,” he shouted. “I’ll give them something to chase, you guys bring the artifact home to Winter.”
“I’m going with you,” I warned.
“No, you’re not.”
“We don’t have time to argue,” I said. “Alice, take it home and then double back to get us.”
“You’re right, we don’t,” Echo said.
I gunned it around the corner. Echo sent another blast of magic their way that had them swerving to a stop, and then we lost them. But not for long.
Time to make Daddy proud.
Chapter Forty-Four
Echo cursed at me as I threw open my car door a
nd Alice swung into the front seat. He braced his arms on either side of the sun roof and hoisted himself through it, then jumped off the roof of the car, landing with easy grace.
“Never fucking listen,” he shook his head, popping open the trunk. He threw me a sword, then tucked a 9mm into the back of his jeans before he grabbed another sword.
“I can do that,” I agreed. “Give me a gun.”
He grabbed a second 9mm for me, then slammed the trunk shut. He banged on it with one hand. “Go!” he shouted at Alice.
She took off without hesitation. The car sounded like the engine was whining, like it was damaged, but it was still going.
“You should date Alice if you want someone who will listen,” I pointed out.
Echo and I sprinted into the shadows beneath the trees. He ignored me, not responding to my comment, as he fingers moved through the air and his lips moved with the spell. We made it in there just as the headlights of the car came around the corner.
And just before the headlights illuminated it, a second car popped into existence, that looked just like ours. It loomed in the shadows, and I sucked in a breath.
“Impressed yet?” Echo didn’t look at me.
He had magic like no witch I’d ever seen.
“No,” I lied.
He grinned as if he knew better.
The car stopped behind ours. Several men got out of the car. My nostrils flared, trying to figure out if they were shifters or not, but I couldn’t tell anymore.
“They’ll scent us if—”
He shook his head. “I used a spell to cloak our scent.”
“Why didn’t you just do that instead of tormenting me with whatever that bad cologne was?”
He frowned. “You didn’t like it?”
One of the shifters wrenched open the car door. His friend fired several times into the car, the shots ringing out in the night, before one of them shouted, “No one in the car!”