“Turned my father against me, caused—” Ronan grabbed the armrest.
Adam bounced over a speed bump. My head grazed the headliner and I lost my balance. Ronan yelped as I fell against him. I eased back, one hand anchored on his steely thigh. “Sorry. You okay?” My morbid curiosity couldn’t wait for a response. I needed answers before I lost it. “She caused what?”
Ronan’s eyes shot blue flames of pain. “She talked my father into making me try to open the Rift before we understood what would happen or got our hands on the rest of the book. I screwed it up. It’s her fault the screwed up magic is causing Adam…” He lowered his head.
I stuck two fingers under his chin, forcing his gaze to mine. “To what?” Deeply rooted pain hazed his eyes, more pain than the flesh wound deserved.
“To die,” Adam said with a detached air. “I don’t just look like a cadaver. I am dying.”
Chapter 8
The info bombs Ronan and Adam kept dropping on me created more questions than answers. I hated it. Too many people were dying, and I loathed that even more. If my mother was alive, I’d want to ream her a new one for withholding dangerous and secret family history from me. No wonder I’d always sensed I never really belonged in this world, no matter how hard I tried to lead a normal life, have friends, go to college, make a few bucks on the side. I wanted to scream, cry, rail at everything I didn’t know about myself and how Ronan and Adam knew it all…or not enough.
The SUV bounced in a pothole, knocking my head on the roof. Ronan cried out and I gripped the seatback to hold steady. We had time to head to my condo before we rescued Zoe. Ronan’s arm needed attention and it gave us a chance to canvass my home for clues.
Adam explained what he meant about dying. When Ronan screwed up the Rift, the bad magic leaking through the portal had caused serious damage to Adam’s developing powers, destroying him from the inside out. The doppel-hunks believed the taint would eventually cause his body to shut down unless someone figured out how to stopper the magic or allow it to flow unfettered by opening the Rift completely.
Funny thing, Riley Senior believed that someone might be me, not that he knew Adam existed. Yet, Ronan dubbed my telekinesis clumsy and erratic and not much better than his when he was at peak condition. You think? Hello, unlucky thirteen. Of course, I neglected to mention that I’d hatched in the middle of a triangle of earthquake fault lines surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. The more fault lines, the more ley line energy the earth held or emitted. Probably the reason why energy and I had an easy time hooking up. Since California had more fault lines than the number of guests at a pre-Abolishment sorcerer reunion, I wasn’t totally convinced I possessed the abilities the doppel-geniuses expected, or if the faulty Rift caused my bad luck episodes. Nor was I sure I didn’t. A parking lot puddle had more depth than I did after that conversation.
We entered the foyer of my condo and I reengaged the alarm. Reality stared me in the face and nausea bloomed in my stomach. A very messy and intrusive reality. I needed an infusion of antacids.
“No forced entry. They bypassed the security system.” Ronan jabbed buttons on the touch pad, examining it as if he expected clues to pop out in crime scene bags.
Perps had tossed everything in their hunt for the blasted book of Forbidden life and death. I kicked a chunk of dried potpourri on the tile floor, slipped on a twig, and fell against Ronan who grunted out an oath to the horned one down under. Adam caught me before my butt kissed the marble tiles.
I gained my balance, not so much a calm stomach. “Thanks.” I smiled apologetically at Ronan who backed away from the storm of Aria. “I’ll snag the first aid kit.” I bolted toward the hall bathroom, dodging the scattered litter of normal life. The life I no longer fit. Or ever had.
Bile stung my throat. I rushed into my purple haven and propped my elbows on the counter. Inane sludge filled my head, forcing the bad stuff into a crowded corner. By the time the dry heaves settled in, I was sitting on the cool tile floor.
A few minutes later, Adam entered. Hunkering down, he handed me an open can of ginger ale. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“Thanks.” Our fingers touched as I took the can. A dash of his soothing energy flushed my self-pitying down the toilet. I sipped the calming soda, bubbles popping in the back of my throat.
Adam stroked my hair. My scalp tingled beneath his warm touch, and liquid fire fizzed along the rim of our auras, reenergizing me. Oddly, I felt as if I’d known him forever, even though it was the beastly Ronan also stirring my senses into a tizzy. The idea of Adam’s potential, impending death tortured my soul. Why hadn’t I realized earlier how off the network of the living he was? With gun-toting bounty hunters on my tail, it became increasingly difficult to concentrate on everything happening around me. I vowed to try harder for all our sakes.
I squeezed the can until soda splashed out the top. “Does it get easier?”
“What?”
“The killing.”
Empathy filled his eyes. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Oh.” I wiped the soda off my hand onto my pants. Should I be happy or frustrated his resume didn’t include assassin? “I guess I should ask Ronan. He graduated from Murder 101.”
Adam helped me stand, released me gently. “It’s not so bad.”
I peered at his reflection in the mirror and lifted a shoulder.
“Dying,” he said, edging closer until my shoulder blades touched his chest.
Warmth trickled into my southern federation. Damn it. My hormones needed a major time-out. Cruel reality knocked any stupid romantic notions out of my head. I backed away. Facing him, I gripped his shoulders. “Swearing by all that is fairy and holy, Aria Elle Walker will not allow you to die.”
He grinned slowly, so freaking gorgeous. Despite his gray pallor, dull eyes, and brittle-looking hair, that is. “If anyone can save me, it’ll be you.”
A loud bang on the door tweaked the nerves in my neck into a twitch storm. “Time’s running,” Ronan said in a raw tone.
I spun away and grabbed a towel. “I’m not normally a weak-kneed drama queen. Really.”
“Hey.” Adam caught my arm. “Neither Ronan nor I think any less of you.”
“I’ll think less of her if she doesn’t get her ass out here.”
I yanked open the door and bestowed a scathing glare on Ronan. “It’s not every day you kill two—”
Faint smile kicking up his lips, he held his gunshot arm to his chest.
Remorse tripped me up. Had the idiot store issued a recall on me yet? “Sorry, I spaced out.” I rubbed my settling stomach.
He brushed past Adam on his way into the bathroom. “Feel better?”
“Yeah, thanks.” I motioned for him to sit on the closed toilet seat.
He unhooked his gun harness, set it on the counter, and called out as Adam walked away, “Scour the bedrooms. I can’t tell if anything’s missing.” He lowered his voice. “You have a computer?”
“Laptop in my office, tablet in my bedroom.”
“Gone. What’s on them?”
“Homework, business and customer files, zeros and ones.” I frowned at his bloody, torn T-shirt. “Strip it.”
He arched his eyebrows but he ripped off the ruined shirt.
Desire rose as I drooled over his to-die-for shoulders, muscled chest, and the washboard abs tapering to slim hips. Oh. My. God. His natural tan didn’t help my bulging, lusting eyes either. Fortunately, Ronan wasn’t paying me an iota of attention while he rummaged in the vanity drawers, gathering first aid supplies as he discovered them in my haphazard glory.
I swiped the fresh coat of perspiration off my upper lip and stared at his gun to stop from totally making a fool of myself.
Perched on the rim of the bathtub, I soaked a rag in antiseptic cleanser. I dabbed the cotton cloth over Ronan’s raw gash, generating a wince. “It’s pretty deep.”
“Wrap it. We don’t have time for a Med-Hub stop.”
Easy to find, Med-Hubs were scattered around the city. They were just small emergency clinics open 24/7 and catered to anyone with a name. I supposed he didn’t want to cough up his name if his father was the all mighty Wizard of the Emerald City.
Frowning, I cleansed the wound and eased the towel up his arm toward the hollow between his neck and shoulder. I wiped the smoking hot tattoo twining his bicep. Green ivy and barbed wire twisted around his arm, dripping drops of red tattoo blood. Each twisted knot on the barbwire formed a swirling number thirteen. Did Ronan also need a focusizer? A strange inner excitement trembled down my limp legs.
I brushed his hair aside, revealing crusty red inflammation bordering two small scabs on his neck. “Who’s been gnawing on you? I think it’s infected.” I touched the cloth to the wounds. He flinched and clenched his hands. “Sleeping with vampires?”
He flicked my hand away. “Leave it.” Tension stood out on his shoulders in knots.
I gripped his square jaw, forcing him to meet my gaze. His smooth-shaven skin blistered beneath my touch. “If we’re in this together, no more dodging.” My thumb rubbed over a tiny white scar beneath his lower lip.
Ronan exhaled his annoyance. “My dad stuck me with a monitoring chip to track everything my body did. If I lost an eyelash, the monitor picked it up.”
My hand faltered, the cloth fell to the floor. “Bastard.” I grabbed the antibiotic cream, squeezed the tube so hard a glop of cream shot out and landed on Ronan’s chest. Heat zoomed to my face. As much as I was dying to lay my bare hands on him, I had to hold my hand back as it warred with my hormones…and the doppelgänger aura meld thingy screwing up my head.
Ronan slid his fingers through the creamy glob and wiped it on the twin wounds. “I agreed to it for my dad’s experiments.”
“Did you have a leak in your think tank or something?” I pushed his hand away and finished slathering the cream on his scabs.
“He also snuck in a tracking chip. I dug them both out before I left Seattle.”
“I suppose he’s the type who can sell black widows to women with arachnophobia too.” I slung the tube on the vanity. It skittered across the slick granite and bounced behind the toilet. “Your father’s a piece of work,” I spat out. Doing my best with an angry air blanketing us, I bandaged his arm.
Ronan guzzled the rest of my soda and tossed the can into the trashcan. “It doesn’t get better, but it becomes easier to shift focus and detach.”
“What?” I taped the last of the gauze in place.
“The killing.”
I shoved the medical supplies into a pile on the counter, my fist crushing a helpless tube of cortisone. “Was your first bad luck kill an accident too?”
“That was the first of two times I lost control of my telekinesis after a ton of energy hit me from external sources.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “I lost focus.”
It didn’t compute. I hadn’t lost focus last night. “This won’t be the last for me, will it?”
He took my hand, wrapping it in the heat of his. Our auras vibrated around us before his taint flared up and killed the meld. “Our powers are mixing in creepy ways I’m sure no one gets. I doubt anyone ever factored in Adam. Who knows how the Rift magic will affect us.” He squeezed my fingers. “Or any other doppelgängers and other sorcerers in the world.”
I knelt between his knees. Our eyes locked, and the certainty in his gaze would have shot me out of orbit if I weren’t already docked for repairs. Reaching his bad arm forward, he feathered his fingers down my cheek. His thumb slid over my lips and he tamped down another wince.
Butterflies fluttered along the back of my neck. I shifted my attention to his arm and eased away lest my traitorous body betray my head beyond the point of no return. “Adam’s…dying because his powers are tainted and erratic, and you’ve lost most of yours. You both can’t exist without sharing your powers until the Rift is fixed.” One way or another. “That’s why you can’t control it and why it keeps attacking me.”
“I guess that’s the doppelgänger effect. Who knows?” Surprise sparkled in his eyes, slid to his mouth. “You’re smarter than you look.”
“We’re like bats twisting upside down in the sunshine.” I swatted his knee and rose to my feet. “Let’s go. First we save Zoe. Then we stop your father’s nefarious plans.”
I helped him slip into the clean T-shirt he’d brought, sticking a finger through a weak seam under the left arm, ripping it. His brow went all wrinkly, but he wore the shirt anyway.
In the living room, I surveyed the sea of disaster with a sharp poke of dismay. So we had a few wrenches chucked into the saving-our-butts goal. Ronan hooked his thumb in a belt loop to stabilize his arm. One-handed, he uprighted an easy chair as if it weighed nothing.
“I’ve never seen any book like this Illuminaria your sperm donor thinks I have. My tablet’s encrypted so they’re up crap creek without a plunger.” My customer data included communications and drawings. I kept my personal charm designs in encrypted files. Fortunately, I backed up to two clouds. One can never be too paranoid.
My diatribe drew winged eyebrows on Ronan’s sallow face. “What’re you hiding?”
I heated from his scrutiny and shoved up my sweater sleeves. “I make enameled charms and keep my designs private, that’s all.”
“Do you sell the charms?”
I shuffled through a life’s worth of decorative odds and souvenir ends to the corner of the living room. My collection of dragon statues in the curio cabinet appeared to have survived the destruction. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, then set the colorful creatures to rights on the glass shelves. Most of the dragons had been gifts from my mother and grandmother, and my favorite pink and purple one formed the logo of my company.
Thank My Lucky Charms. I couldn’t very well name my business Lucky Thirteen, huh? “I sell pieces to local jewelry shops, craft shows, and on my web store. My main business is in custom pieces pursuant to customer specifications.” Hail to my new mission statement. ’Bout time I nailed it down. Note to thieves: update Aria’s website.
Ronan seemed to chew on my words as he reset the chairs around the dining table. The perps had slashed the burgundy and gold chair cushions, the stuffing hanging down the sides like sopping clouds. I watched him punch the innards into place, his hands searching inside the cushions a little too long for my tastes. Annoyance flickered through me.
Racking my brain, I stalked from one end of the room to the other. Hiding the rage and terror clawing at me, I rubbed a gouge along the corner of the mahogany end table where it had banged the edge of the steps. The table was one of the few things I’d kept of my mother’s. I gripped the edge until my knuckles whitened and Ronan gently pried my hands away. Combing for additional evidence, I hid the rage and terror clawing at me. “Your father really thinks my mom and her ancestors hid parts of the book?” Both our gazes slid to Melisande’s tablet sitting on the sofa.
“He spent years searching for the Illuminaria, ancient texts, and journals of the Thirteen sorcerers. He has sketchy evidence that your ancestor wrote the book,” Ronan replied. “Your mother’s the descendant. Did you train together?”
Reluctantly, I threw the pillow clutched to my chest onto the couch, met his trademarked Cro-Magnon stare. “Get real. She hardly knew the extent of my abilities.” Regret slipped over me.
Dawn’s light bloomed inside my mind, illuminating a rocky trail to a forgotten memory. I sank down on the frayed couch, shoving wads of stuffing through the zippered cushion. The dead strolled across my spine in lopsided gaits, sending shivers up and down my backside. “She always pounded into me that if I possessed unusual paranormal abilities I should keep it zipped, even to my grandmother.” Mom totally knew about me if she was a descendant. I slapped my hand over my mouth. It was all a ruse. Why, Mom?
Adam finished his clue gathering in the bedrooms and joined us. “Did she leave anything behind?” He stopped in front of the window
s overlooking the wintergreen hillsides. Wistfulness flared in his eyes, and his hair swayed as if air drifted through the strands. He scratched his pointy ear, snagging a thatch of hair off his scalp. “Journal, books, letters?” he added as if nothing were amiss, shoving the wadded hairball in his pocket.
A pang of alarm chased off the perennial cobwebs in my head. How much longer did Adam have to live?
“Nothing like that.” A wayward thought cut through the lingering head fuzz. Years ago, I used to see her hunched over her desk, researching and writing during every spare moment. I couldn’t put my pinkie on it, though. Whenever I had asked, she’d said she was writing a book. I never dug deeper.
“What—” Interest increased the unnatural sparkle in Ronan’s eyes.
I waved my hand, scrunching my face. “I remember Mom writing a novel in a notebook when she usually used a laptop.” I ransacked my memory to the day I had plowed through her paperwork, recalling all the useless drivel I’d shredded. My face fell, as well as my anticipation, into a puddle of frustration.
Sudden horror clamped that infernal claw around my heart. Duh, blonde alert. I pushed off the sofa and cut across the room to the hallway. I wheeled toward Adam. “Did you see my cats?”
“Hiding under your bed.”
Relief snipped a knot in my neck. “I’ll check on them, and then we should take off.”
I coaxed Cody and Cleo out from underneath my bed. My purple swirl comforter hung in tatters off one side of the skewed mattress, and Cody had polyfill wrapped around her neck. Seething, I snatched the stuffing away and flung it into the trashcan. I wanted to fling the bastard who’d done this off my balcony with a wad of polyfill shoved up his ass.
Hugging each cat, I kissed their furry heads, and they snuggled on the bed. Cody swatted at the key ring stuck in my waistband and I knew they’d be okay. As I turned to walk away, that wayward thought decked me and I skidded to a halt. I yanked the keys out of my waistband, flicking the three keys until the small brass key to Mom’s old trunk where she’d stored mementos from her past stopped me cold. I always kept the key close to me, to remind me that Mom had a life before me. A haunting memory from my childhood filled my head. Oh, holy mother of the craptastic.
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