by Sarina Dorie
“So you need me?” I asked.
“I require an assistant to rub my lamp and wish for the appropriate magics. I’ve already used up my last wish from … Brogan.” His smile almost masked the shame in his eyes, but not quite.
I could only imagine how much it cost his pride to ask me, the daughter of the woman who had enslaved him to the school.
“You’d better not disappoint.” He pointed to his back with a flamboyant wave of his hand. “Start rubbing.”
I ran to him and hugged him. “Let me help you make your wishes come true.”
We passed through the crypt Vega had previously taken me into and through a long chamber that held an older crypt. With my assistance, Khaba lit the passage so we could see better and disarmed two booby traps. With each wish I made, his lamp shifted position, and I had to rub a new place on his body. Each time, it migrated lower.
“Pretty soon this is going to cross our professional boundaries and become naughty,” I said.
“Probably. It’s a good thing we’re alone in a dark passage without any witnesses.” He winked.
Khaba’s presence was a balm to my worries. I should have asked him to help me find Derrick sooner. I should have trusted him as a friend and colleague.
He pointed to his lower back. “Massage my back before we get to the next room so I can open the door and brighten the chamber at the same time.”
He leaned against the wall as I kneaded his dense muscles. My hands were tired, but I didn’t complain. Everything I did was for Derrick. I was pretty sure I was going to have to massage Khaba’s butt again soon. I was going to handle the situation maturely and impassively—and not brag about it later to Josie.
Khaba straightened. “That’s enough. Now say it.”
“I wish the door was unlocked and the next room was lit.”
Khaba snapped his fingers. “Your wish is my command.”
The heavy door swung open. On the other side stood Thatch.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Behind Door Number One
Felix Thatch strode toward us. He shook his head at me. I backed up.
“How does that saying go?” Khaba stood his ground. “The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.”
“No crime has been committed. I’m here to ensure it stays that way.” Thatch pointed to me. “Miss Lawrence, go upstairs and return to your room.”
“No,” I said. “You go upstairs. You were supposed to stay confined to your quarters.”
Thatch blocked the doorway. I couldn’t see much past him, but I thought I saw a large slab of rock in the middle of the room. I didn’t see Derrick.
Maybe he’d already gotten rid of him. But if he had, why would he still be blocking the door?
“You need to stop,” Thatch said. “You’re doing exactly what the Raven Queen wants you to do. Go upstairs, and we can discuss this.”
“So you can erase my memories like you were going to before,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to erase your memories.” The corners to his mouth turned down. “I was simply going to make your mood … more agreeable.”
Khaba remained where he was. He waved me closer, his smile sly. I knew what he needed. He required my assistance to defeat Thatch.
“Don’t move,” Thatch said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will do what I deem necessary.” He lifted his hand. A large ball of red fire flared to life in his palm.
Khaba’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare threaten me. I should have insisted Jeb fire you twenty-five years ago. Clarissa, come here.”
Thatch’s face remained emotionless. I didn’t believe Thatch would try to hurt me. After everything, I supposed I didn’t want to believe he was actually evil.
I stepped toward Khaba. Thatch threw the ball of fire. It crackled in the air between Khaba and me. I dove back. Khaba leapt to the other side. Thatch darted through the door into the room with us. He waved his wand in the air, incanting as he did so. Khaba lunged toward him and punched him in the stomach. Thatch doubled over, the air knocked out of him.
Khaba wrapped an arm around Thatch’s neck in a headlock. “Clarissa, rub my lamp!”
I had my hand on him, rubbing frantically before the words were even completely out of his mouth.
I had to be fast, but I didn’t know what to wish for. I said the first thing that came to me. “I wish you were free to make your own wishes.”
Khaba released Thatch. He turned to me in shock. “Oh no, honey. Why did you wish that?” His voice didn’t sound right. It echoed like multiple people were speaking at once, each slightly out of sync with each other.
Thatch’s brow furrowed in disbelief. He shook his head at me.
“What?” I asked.
Khaba stared down at himself. Smoke billowed around him. He swelled in size. His clothes caught on fire. He twisted and writhed. Whatever was happening looked painful. It looked like he was fighting with himself. I didn’t understand. I thought freeing him would be a good thing.
“Run,” Thatch said. He shoved me through the door, separating me from him and Khaba.
The last thing I saw before the door slammed closed was Khaba exploding into a giant ball of fire.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Cadavers Don’t Complain
Khaba’s supernova blinded me as the door slammed closed, and I stumbled around the nearly empty vault. The room shook. Dust and small rocks dropped from the ceiling. I fell to my knees as the vibration rattled through me. Another door lay on the other side of the room.
I could run like Thatch said. He’d seemed sincere in his concern about the danger. But he hadn’t rushed into the room with me. He’d stayed behind with Khaba. I hoped they were both okay.
Khaba’s transformation hadn’t been reassuring. Maybe he’d turned back into a demon.
I knew I should run, but this is where Derrick rested. I was sure of it. I didn’t see him, but this had to be the place Pro Ro had told me about. On a pedestal were sealed envelopes labeled “answer keys.”
A long gray slab of stone dominated the center of the room. I swung my wand back and forth to illuminate the space better with my flashlight spell. I approached the slab, thinking it might be a sarcophagus, but it more closely resembled a bench about chest high. Something about the bench wasn’t right. The top was uneven in places, and from where I stood, it looked like I could see inside a box. At other angles I couldn’t see an interior. It reminded me of a hologram, fluctuating into and out of view. It shimmered and caught the light unevenly. Magic was at work. Tentatively, I reached out my hand and felt the stone. It shifted under my hand like fabric.
I felt around, my fingers encountering a mass I couldn’t see under that sheet. I grabbed and pulled. Invisibility fabric shifted aside.
Derrick lay with his eyes closed. He looked peaceful and content, the corners of his mouth curled up as though he were about to snicker at some joke. A purple bloom of bruises marred one side of his eyes, and scratches were etched into his cheek and temple. Despite his injuries, his skin was clean.
Tentatively, I smoothed his cerulean hair out of his eyes. He was as cold as a corpse. My breath caught. He couldn’t be dead. I’d seen his dreams.
I shook his arm and shouted his name. He remained still. Thatch had been in this room. He had known I would come for Derrick. He might have killed him.
I felt Derrick’s neck for a heartbeat, my fingers trembling so much I couldn’t be certain whether the thudding I felt was his or my own erratic heartbeat. I removed my hand and watched for the rise and fall of his chest. I thought I detected the slightest movement. When I placed my hand close to his nose, a tickle of breath brushed my fingers.
I wasn’t sure if he was in a coma or in some kind of magical stasis. All I knew was I had to help. My Red affinity had been strong enough to break through his invisibility. I hoped it would break through this.
I boosted myself up on the slab. Awkwardl
y I twisted to place my hands on his chest. All I needed to do to wake the dead was touch him like I had with Sebastian Reade. Of course, the Red affinity’s ability for necromancy had its limitations. I would have to keep touching him or he would die.
Nothing happened. Maybe it was because he wasn’t actually dead. I thought about the time I had saved an old man from cardiac arrest with my powers. Maybe I could Frankenstein Derrick awake with my affinity.
Dox Woodruff had attempted to resurrect someone with his affinity, but he hadn’t been Red. Nor did I intend to drain myself in doing so.
Derrick remained still. I shifted so that I straddled his torso, keeping my palms pressed to his naked chest. His heart lurched under my fingers and then returned to a soft, almost undetectable beat.
If this was a fairy tale, I would kiss him. He was my sleeping beauty. I had broken his curse once before through touch.
I pressed my lips to his. His heart thundered under my palm, and he gasped. I tried to pull back to look at him, but his hand grasped the back of my head, holding me there and drinking me in.
He tasted like wind and spices, not decay and death. His tongue brushed against mine, and he moaned.
“I need you. I need your touch.” He mumbled against my lips.
He’d said that before, the night he’d returned. Our lovemaking had been unexpected—and unexpectedly brief. I didn’t know how much Derrick understood about what I was and what my magic could do. Perhaps he had meant he needed comfort after his encounter with the Raven Queen. Or perhaps he needed my affinity to heal him with magic.
I kissed his neck and his jaw, the prickles of his stubble scraping my lips. His fingers found their way under my skirt, kneading my thighs. The frigid stone under us bit into my knees, hard and unyielding. It was going to be an effort to ignore the discomfort. I squirmed back, trying to shift the fabric of the invisibility cloth under my knees as a cushion.
At any moment, Thatch might throw back the door and find us. If he wasn’t dead. I pushed all thoughts of him aside.
Derrick tilted his pelvis to grind against mine. A flash of pleasure shot through me. I didn’t think I would have trouble getting my affinity to work to try to heal him. The red energy in my core swelled and danced. I let the magic radiate through me. He lifted his head and kissed me. My insides turned to molten lava, making my skin feel feverish under all the layers of clothes I wore. His hands were cold on the bare flesh of my hips as he slid my leggings and panties lower. I fought to wiggle them down my legs. He fumbled with the buttons of my coat. We were awkward and bumbling, like the first time we’d been together. We managed to remove my coat. I freed one foot from a shoe and slipped one leg from my leggings.
Like that first time we’d been together, there was a yearning in him so deep it was like a bottomless pit he couldn’t fill. Yet he didn’t rush. Each kiss brought with it the promise of more. He stroked me, electric chills washing over my skin, making my affinity spark in my veins.
His erection pressed against me, teasingly sliding against me. It was difficult to concentrate on my affinity with the wanting building in me. He nibbled my neck, tasting my skin as if he wanted to consume me. He kissed me urgently, like his life depended on it.
As if he would never see me again.
Even in that moment of passion, a part of me feared that his life did depend on this. For all I knew, he might fall back into oblivion the moment I broke away like Sebastian Reade had.
“I love you. We’ll always be together,” I said.
“No, Clarissa,” he said between pants. “We won’t.”
“I’ll save you. I’ll fix you.”
“You can’t. There’s no saving me.”
He plunged inside me, and I cried out from the satisfaction of it. He thrust deeper, making me gasp. My pelvic muscles clenched around him. The affinity inside me fought to break loose. I couldn’t tell if it would be rainbows or lightning. I wanted Derrick to be alive and his latest curse broken—I didn’t want to leave him a charred lump like I had with Julian. I needed to focus.
The pleasure built inside me. I imagined it traveling up my arms and out of my hands and into him. Red magic flowed out of me, and I willed it to give him life. I didn’t need Vega’s do-anything spell.
I was the Red affinity. I was powerful.
Light radiated from my bare arms and through my shirt, illuminating his face. My hands on his chest glowed pink. It was about then I noticed the color of his eyes, no longer the vivid blue they once had been. They were solid black like those of the Raven Court. He crushed me against him for another kiss, stealing my breath away. He thrust harder, faster, pleasure and pain mingling as one.
“Slow down,” I said. “If I’m going to . . . save you . . . I need my . . . to build slowly.”
It didn’t so much feel as though I was sending magic now as much as it was being sucked from my veins. My skin prickled like needles stabbed into my muscles. My hands didn’t resemble my own. These hands were etched with red lines, squiggles radiating in fractals. They reminded me of varicose veins, like the pattern that had been on Sebastian Reade’s face and hands. It was what Khaba had described had marked Brogan McLean’s body.
The pain in my hands and arms intensified, only now it wasn’t just my limbs that hurt. The sensation radiated up into my chest. It felt as though my stomach had turned inside out, all my organs yanked out of me.
“Something isn’t right,” I said, trying to pull away.
He squeezed me so tightly around my ribs it hurt. “I need your magic.”
“I think you’re draining me,” I said.
Khaba had said those markings on the bodies were unusual. The draining had been done by the same person—by Miss Periwinkle, I’d assumed. Surely Derrick’s magic couldn’t create the same signature she had.
Which meant I had been wrong. Gertrude Periwinkle had never killed Sebastian Reade or Brogan McLean or anyone else. The realization crushed into me, making it difficult to breathe.
I watched the spidery veins darken. Derrick was doing the same thing to me. He was draining me.
I lifted my hips away from Derrick’s and for the briefest moment, the intensity of that pulling inside me diminished. He grunted. His pelvis arched, his erection searching for me.
“Derrick, stop. You’re going to kill me.”
Venom laced his voice, making him sound gruff and unlike himself. “That’s the point.” He took hold of my hips and sat me on him again.
“What?” I thought I had misheard him.
I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me. When the pulling ache started up in my arms again, I knew I hadn’t. He was draining me. He was a murderer.
I tried to twist away, but couldn’t.
“Think about what you’re doing,” I gasped between spasms of pain in my chest. “You don’t want to kill me. You love me.”
“That’s why I have to do this. She’ll never get you this way. She’ll never be able to torture you or kidnap you.”
This wasn’t Derrick talking. It couldn’t be. It had to be his brainwashing. I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me. He thrust into me, the simultaneous pleasure of sex and the pain of the draining confusing my senses.
“Stop!” I slapped him hard across the face.
He didn’t let go of me. Tears filled his eyes. “I will always love you, Clarissa.”
The previous fever of my desire wicked away and was replaced with the frigid chill of the crypt. The cold of death sank below my flesh and into my bones. I shivered uncontrollably. The blooms of burst blood vessels under my skin darkened.
His fingers closed around my throat. I didn’t want to hurt Derrick. I wanted to help him. He squeezed my esophagus, his eyes so sad as he looked at me.
I thought of Miss Periwinkle’s door, unlocking with a question about The Little Mermaid. The mermaid in the story had sacrificed her happiness for the prince’s. I had always hated that story with its lac
k of happy ending. Was that my life? Couldn’t I save us both?
I loved Derrick. I couldn’t imagine the world without him. For years I had dreamed we would be together. But this wasn’t Derrick anymore. He was a brainwashed shadow of his former self. I wouldn’t let him kill me.
I wouldn’t allow the Raven Queen to triumph. I would break her spell on him.
I tried to stir up my affinity, to let it blaze inside me to send it rushing into him. The pain sucking away my soul was too great. I tried to block the discomfort as Thatch had taught me, but it was harder to get started when I already was in pain. I tried to concentrate on the bursts of pleasure building inside me. That was what would strengthen me. I sank into those pulses of enjoyment. My head floated, distant and detached.
I wasn’t breathing.
I was distantly aware of the longing and adoration in Derrick’s eyes. Bliss buzzed inside me in waves, cresting higher. The moment was coming. If I could just hold on a little longer, I could shoot lightning out of my palms and break our connection. I could save him and myself.
The world grew hazy and dark. The pulse of orgasm sparked inside me, igniting my affinity anew. I drove it out into him, a massive propulsion of energy. I forced it out of my palms, not the molten lightning it had been when I’d done this before, but just as intense. White light flared so bright it drowned out the darkness.
I jolted my magic into him, and Derrick screamed. I didn’t want to hurt him. The idea of it made me want to throw myself across him and beg for forgiveness, but I couldn’t make my limbs work. The pulsing spasm of light projecting out of me was too intense.
My magic flooded into him, arching his body in pain and pleasure. Yet even as he screamed, he yearned for more. He kept on taking that magic, unrelenting as he stole more of it away from me. I kept giving until I had nothing left.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Derrick’s lips brushed against mine, the tenderness of his touch reminding me of how I loved him.