Grace bolted across the floor and knocked me onto the bed with a wild wave of her arm. “Holy crap, Sam—the journal. Jonah’s journal. I think I found the first message.”
She kneeled over me on the bed, shoving the journal in my face and biting her lip. I tried to ignore the way her hair was tumbling around her face and the fact that she was wearing Cat’s training shorts—two sizes too small and distractingly tight. She pushed the book at me again and raised her eyebrows expectantly. “Sam! Can you see it now?”
“In the beginning, there were two races—” Grace grabbed the book back out of my hands, cutting short my reading. Her forehead creased as she stared down at the page. I brushed a stray piece off hair off her shoulder, letting my thumb stroke her soft skin. I shifted awkwardly under her weight and warned myself to focus on the book. Not her skin, not her hair, not those criminally cute shorts. Book. “Are you seeing something different, Grace?”
Grace slid off my lap and settled on the floor at my feet. She stared down at the open book and reached one hand up to tug me onto the carpet beside her. “I think I am. I really do. If I try to read it, all I can see is the normal words, the same ones that were always there, but if I just look at it without trying to read…” She tilted her head and gazed at the worn paper. “See! Can you see that?”
I looked from the book to her giddy face and grimaced. I could tell she really wanted me to say yes, but all I could see was the same words I had watched her read a thousand times already since we got back from our unintended sojourn in the Elder’s putrid city. “Sorry, Gracie. I don’t see anything new.”
“Try, Sam. Come on, please. Touch me—do that paired, ‘two halves of the one power’ thing that Jonah taught us. If the gift gave us strong enough magic to break everyone out of the citadel, maybe it can help you see what I’m seeing?” Grace jumped to her feet and propped the ancient journal against the pillows on the top bunk. She pulled her training top up to expose her bare stomach. “Come on, press yourself against me. Like you did back in the cell. Mold our magic together.”
I raised my eyebrows and let out a low groan. “Grace, you’re killing me here.”
“What?” She squinted at me, her attention still fixed on the book.
“It might be a good idea to wear a pair of pants if you want me to focus on magic? And maybe a bra.” Grace crossed one arm over her chest and tugged at the end of her shorts with the other hand. Her cheeks heated to a bright pink and my fingers itched to pull her closer. “Yeah. Squirming around like that and biting your lip—not helping. There’s a pair of sweat pants and a shirt on my bed. Put them on. Please.”
I counted to a hundred and thought about wet, slimy fish while Grace threw on my oversized clothes. She stomped back to the bunk and did a twirl. “Now, you happy?”
“Miserable and frustrated actually, but at least I’m alive. Which I wouldn’t be if Eve came in and caught us ‘molding our magic together’ while you were dressed to seduce me.” I ducked to avoid her right fist, but she caught me with a left-handed uppercut to the chin.
“Seduce you? I’ll kick your ass, Mr. Delusional. They were training clothes.” Grace jabbed my jaw again playfully.
I held my hands in the air. “I surrender, you’re right—short shorts and no bra. Appropriate training gear. Now, combined magic, is it?”
Grace narrowed her eyes at me and her lips curved up at the corners. “I’m not biting, Samuel Hayes. Focus on the magic, nothing else.” Her smile faded, and she pressed her fingers against her temples. “I hate this responsibility. Everyone thinks the book is the key and that I’m the only one who can unlock it. What if I don’t do it right, Sam? What if I screw everything up?”
“We’ll do it together. You’re not alone.” Grace nodded and let me pull her closer to me. “Right, tell me what I should be looking for before we try to connect our magic.”
“Just look at the book, but don’t try and read the words.” She hesitated for a moment and wrinkled her nose. “It’s more like you listen to the book—don’t make that face! I know it sounds stupid, but that’s what it felt like. I wasn’t even really trying to read it anymore, I was just spaced out, thinking about Jonah and Anna, and suddenly it was there.”
“Sounds . . . reasonable?” I said. Grace pursed her lips and twisted her body away from me. I grabbed her by the waist and turned her to face me again. “Sorry, Gracie, sorry. I am on board. Let’s uncover blurry Demon messages together. Show me some skin.”
Grace gave me a warning look and pulled her shirt up so that I could press my palms against her bare skin. I stifled a moan as the first wave of her magic beat against my fingertips and slid up my arms. She stepped closer, and my hands slipped around her waist and onto her lower back. “Look at the book, Sam.”
I dragged my eyes away from her face and focused on the yellowing pages of Jonah’s journal. I tried not to focus on the words, but my eyes instinctively began to decode the letters. Grace ran her nails over my chest. Her mouth was so close that I felt her breath on my skin. “Don’t read it, Sam. Listen. Feel Jonah’s presence.”
Grace’s magic was inside me now, making its way through my veins like an electric current and filling the cracks in my soul. The exhaustion I had been fighting since we returned from the Elder’s city tugged at my body, and my eyelids drooped. The page swam in front of my eyes, a swirl of colors and shapes and whispers. Whispers. My eyes snapped open. “Grace!”
“You felt it?” Grace’s eyes were wide.
I nodded. “Yeah. Shit. I did. Something like, ‘Go back to our beginning’?”
Grace flung herself at me and wound her arms around my neck, kissing my mouth hard enough to make me lose my mind. It took all my self-restraint to untangle myself from her grasp. I tipped her chin up so I could see her face. “What does that mean though, Grace? Go back to our beginning? Back to the start of the Spirit War?”
“That’s what I thought at first, he wanted us to dig through the Spirit War history books again, but then I copped it—our beginning. Jonah isn’t one of us, Sam. He doesn’t want us to look at our history—”
“The Demons!” I grabbed the leather bound book and snapped it shut. “His first message is asking us to question the Demons. Why?”
Grace’s eyes flashed as she strode toward the door. “That’s exactly what we’re going to find out, because I, for one, am goddamn sick of being kept in the dark.”
As she whirled onto the corridor, Grace’s hair spun around her face, and she gave me a look of fierce determination. A flash of inexplicable joy speared my chest. Grace would never stop fighting until the people she loved were safe, and that included me. Even though I didn’t deserve her. Even though we were nothing alike. One born for war, the other born for love.
I stood totally still and tried to burn her image into my brain, but the icy fear left behind by my dream closed around my heart like a fist. Foreboding tasted bitter on my lips.
That was the cruel truth about happiness—it was far too fragile to survive the touch of hands born for battle.
Chapter Two
Grace
“What haven’t you told us?” I slammed the kitchen door open so hard it swung back and almost smashed into my face. Sam grabbed the offending piece of wood and held it steady. His lips were set into a straight line, but I could tell by the flash of his right dimple that he was picturing what it would have looked like if the door had knocked me on my ass. Not exactly the dramatic entrance I was hoping for.
Squaring my shoulders, I marched over the tiled floor and threw Jonah’s diary onto the table in front of Gabriel and Niamh. Eve and Aza stopped loading the dishwasher and exchanged glances. I clenched my teeth and jabbed my finger at the offending page.
“I saw Jonah’s first message. We both did, Sam and me. Jonah wants us to go back to the start, but not the start of our history—the Veil, the Circle—he means back to the beginning of all this. Back to the start of his history.” I couldn’t conceal the accusation sha
rpening the edges of my words as I looked from Niamh and Gabriel to Aza. “Your history. The Demons. This isn’t just about us—that’s what he’s trying to tell me. This is about all of you as well.”
My fingers curled in on themselves, preparing for a battle, but Niamh simply slumped down in her chair. Her voice was flat when she asked Aza to take a seat. Gabriel scraped his thumbnail along the edge of the table top, and Eve placed her hand on the small square machine on the counter and tapped it firmly. “Sounds like we might need coffee. Grace, do you want a cup of tea?”
I shook my head sulkily, and Sam threw me a puzzled look. I shrugged my shoulders. “Drinking tea from a machine is weird. This is Ireland. There should be a kettle and a teapot—it’s not Hidden Cottage without a teapot.”
“I didn’t realize it was a pressing issue for you, Grace. We shall invest in an electric kettle first thing in the morning. Or would you rather a stove-top kettle?” For a fleeting moment, Niamh appeared to have returned to her usual self, but the façade vanished as soon as I poked the book. She sighed and dropped her hands into her lap. “Grace, Jonah was consumed by looking backward. He spent two thousand years looking over his shoulder and uncovered nothing. If this is all—”
“She didn’t ask for a lecture about Jonah. She asked you to go back to the start of your story.” Sam’s eyes burned with emerald fire, and I wrapped my arms tighter around my body.
“As you wish.” Niamh stared down into the steaming cup of coffee Eve had placed in front of her. “I will start at the beginning as I know it.” She tipped her head toward the empty chairs surrounding the table. “Please, sit. If I must dredge up ancient history, I’d rather people not stand on ceremony while I do.”
Eve slipped into the seat beside Aza, but Niamh waited until Sam and I had settled ourselves before she began to speak. “You know that travelers between the realms were not uncommon before the Veil fell. Some passed from realm to realm seeking enlightenment, others were sent by their people as diplomats. My people believed that the ability to hop between worlds was a gift from the gods—the miracle of existing in another realm without aging or losing time in one’s own home—but they saw the inability to procreate outside of our home realms as nature’s warning that these visits should be temporary.”
Aza slid her hand over the table and squeezed Niamh’s hand tightly. Sam met my eye and kicked his chair a little closer to mine as Niamh continued speaking. “It was an honor to be chosen to represent our people. I was so happy to be selected—my parents cried the day I received the letter.”
“They looked very proud.” The words slipped off my tongue before I could stop them, and my cheeks burned as all attention turned to me. I picked at my thumbnail. “I saw them hugging you. When you were projecting your memories to the Angelic Council in the courtroom—I saw you holding a letter.”
Sam’s dark eyebrows drew together. The coffee cup looked miniature in his strong hand. “I didn’t see that. I saw war and fighting. And Lizzie, with a baby.”
Niamh flinched and stared down at her lap. Aza closed her fingers tighter over Niamh’s delicate hand. Her voice was gruff. “We don’t all see the same thing. To share her visions with us, Niamh must let us inside herself. People take their own paths through her mind.”
“You can’t keep us out when you’re projecting your visions? You can’t hide anything?” I stared at Niamh’s pale face.
She shook her head. “My people called the gift projection, but it’s somewhat of a misnomer. I cannot push my visions out, I must draw others in to share them.”
“Why did they choose you?” Sam’s fingertips beat a staccato rhythm on the table top as he spoke.
Niamh raised her chin. “Because I was a good student. Because my natural talent was more powerful than most, and I worked hard to strengthen it further. My world called for Seers to go forth and ensure the safety of our people, and I was proud to be chosen.”
“Why was the safety of your world in question, Niamh?” Eve leaned forward in her chair. My eyes were drawn to the streak of gray running through her dark hair. Before she was imprisoned by the circle her hair had been a glossy shade of black and her skin smooth. Not anymore.
Niamh glanced at Gabriel and Aza before answering. Sam’s eyes narrowed. “My people are—” Niamh came to a halt and pinched her lips. “My world was, when I last knew it, a peaceful place. Like this world, the people had originally evolved into distinct races with attributes and gifts of their own. Over thousands of years, the divisions melted away and new gifts emerged from the mixing of races. We lived in peace and prosperity. Until the decades before my birth.”
“It was the same for my world.” Aza nodded slowly. “Yes. Good people. Many races, many histories—all respected and honored in our shared heritage. Until the darkness began to poison our children’s blood.”
“It started with the dreams for my people. A black fog that crept inside the mind’s eye and blinded its victim.” Niamh stared out the window into the twilight. “A Seer deprived of their sight is a terrible thing to witness.”
“What did this? To the Seer’s?” I turned to Aza. “To the children?”
Aza turned her palms to the ceiling. “Nobody knew. The darkness tiptoed in and out like a thief in the night. The strongest amongst us could smell it. Could taste it on the air—but we couldn’t find it. Then Jonah came.”
“Jonah?” I pressed my hand against my forehead and rubbed hard.
“He traveled to my world too. It was after he left that my people decided to send their own representatives to the other worlds to investigate the darkness that Jonah described.” Niamh threaded her fingers together.
“And you had met Jonah when he came to your world?” Eve asked.
Aza shook her head. “Not me, I was still a student. I only heard about him from others. Mostly because they thought he was crazy. But smart. Got to give him that.”
Eve turned her head to face Niamh again. “And you?”
Niamh’s shoulders dropped, and she sighed. “Yes. I met him, I liked him, and I volunteered to be the delegate to come to this world because I knew it was his next destination after our planet. There you go. That’s the beginning of my story. I was a stupid, stupid little girl who trapped her sister and herself away from home for eternity. I hope that information is exactly what is required to stop the Elders from massacring an entire race of people, but I sincerely doubt it.”
I squeezed my hands between my thighs and stared down at the table so that I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone or acknowledge the tremor in Niamh’s voice. I screwed my eyes shut. This was pointless. What did Jonah think we could achieve from the history of a handful of Demons. It had nothing to do with the Elders or the Veil.
“He thought the darkness had found a home in this world.” I lifted my head to look at Gabriel. “Jonah. He followed it through the realms and ended up here.”
“The Spirit Demons?” Sam pushed his coffee cup to one side so he could lean closer to Gabriel.
Gabriel ran a hand over his jaw. “At first that’s what he believed, and even though he grieved the Halfborn race, he was relieved that the darkness had been beaten.”
Niamh’s voice was subdued. “Then he started to sense it again. The blackness. He was drawn to the same places, over and over, convinced there were answers or clues, but unable to Seek them fully. Unable to break the code. It tore him apart, made him paranoid. When our home was broken into and our library destroyed, he spiraled out of control and disappeared.”
Niamh folded her arms tightly across her chest. I stretched over the table so I could meet her eyes. “But he hadn’t disappeared. He’d gone to help Anna. He would never have left if he had a choice, I felt the truth in his heart.”
Niamh’s lips remained crushed together, but the crease between her eyebrows softened. Sam tapped his knuckles on the table. “What kind of places was Jonah being drawn to?”
“Monuments, works of art, historic sites—that kind o
f thing. Why?” Niamh sat up a little straighter in her chair, the trademark sharpness beginning to remerge from behind her icy gaze.
“Jonah’s a Seeker, right?” Niamh tilted her head and waited for Sam to continue speaking. “So, what if he was right. What if he was being drawn to these things because of his Seeking power, but he wasn’t strong enough to figure out the meaning?”
Niamh’s nostrils flared. “Jonah was unrivaled in his Seeking ability. If there was anything—”
“But he’s not of this world, Niamh. And he doesn’t possess one of the Lost Powers.” Gabriel held his hand aloft in an attempt to redirect Niamh’s indignant fury. “Niamh, listen—Jonah himself said his gift was strongest in his own world. Maybe the kids will be able to see something that no Demon could? Surely, it’s worth trying?”
Niamh held his stare for a full minute before she turned her thinned lips to Aza. “Go find that troublesome Human.”
Sam and Gabriel both opened their mouths, but Niamh silenced them with a raised finger. “There is no call to argue with me. I am allowing you to visit the places Jonah was drawn to. I sorely suspect it will serve no purpose other than to stir up bad memories, but there is some logic in your argument, and far be it for me to mess with logic.”
“Is that why you sent Aza to get Brandon? You want him to test your hypothesis?” Sam smirked at his own joke, undeterred by Niamh’s glare.
Aza marched back into the kitchen with Brandon at her heels. He eyed us with lowered brows. “What’s going on? Is this about the prisoners?”
“No. This is about university, actually,” Niamh said. “You’re going to help Aza lead a mission tonight.”
Brandon gripped on to the back of my chair with his two hands. “You’re letting me go on active duty?”
“You have the greatest knowledge of modern day Dublin.” Niamh waved her fingers to dislodge Sam and me from our seats. “Hurry, children. Jonah always visited this masterpiece by night.”
The Demon-Born Trilogy: (Complete Paranormal Fantasy Series) Page 48