“I know it’s difficult to believe—that magic exists—but you’ve seen it with your own eyes. Twice now. Why don’t you want to believe it?”
“Because it makes no sense.”
“Neither does life on this planet, yet we’ve accepted this.”
“Life here does make sense. There’s gravity and water and—”
“Look at my feet.”
I gasped. They were levitating over the snow. “You can…you can fly?”
“Now can you please get rid of the necklace?” he asked.
I clutched it tighter. “How could you think that seeing you do that would reassure me?”
The stone had warmed in my palm. Although Gwen hadn’t told me from whom it would protect me, Cruz just had. By admitting he was averse to iron, I deduced the necklace was supposed to protect me from him.
CHAPTER 8 – THE CORPSE
I gripped the necklace so tightly that the chain links bit into my flesh. “You didn’t suggest I take the wind chime down because it would blow away, did you?”
Cruz sighed. The air he expelled came out as a little cloud of fog that dispersed sluggishly. “I couldn’t have gone into your house through the front door. Since you don’t have a back door, I would have had to climb through a window. It would have looked strange, don’t you think?”
“So if I wear the necklace, you just can’t come to close to me, right? You’re not going to die?”
He nodded, so I unraveled the necklace, held it up, and slipped it on. Cruz scowled.
“What does opal do to you?” I asked, as the pendant settled against my rising chest.
“It makes you invisible to us.”
“So you can’t see me right now?”
“We can see you. We just don’t know what you are.”
Time, like his breath, seemed suspended. “What I am?” I shivered, as though my skin were just remembering I was outside in the dead of winter in nothing but a long-sleeved black dress. “What am I?” I asked him.
“You’re a hunter.”
“A hunter?”
“A faehunter.”
The trembling stopped, and not because I felt warmer. If anything, the wind was picking up, lifting snowflakes from the ground, and swirling them around the graveyard. “So you’re the enemy?” I asked, as my long hair flogged my cheeks.
“You’re the enemy.”
“Why are you still standing next to me then? Why aren’t you…flying off?”
“Because you’re powerless.”
“But I thought I had the sight.”
“Which means you can see me for what I am. That’s it.”
“But you can’t touch me now that I’m wearing the necklace.”
“I don’t need to touch you to kill you, Catori. Did you not see the flames in my hands?” He shoved his leather sleeve up. Sure enough, his entire forearm glowed. “There’s fire underneath my skin. It seethes inside my entire body.”
I found myself stepping back, but then I stopped. “If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it already. You want something from me, don’t you?” Snow was starting to soak through my leather boots. I could no longer feel my toes. “And it has to do with my mother, doesn’t it? That’s why you’re here.”
“I’m here because of what your mother did.”
“What did she do?”
“She dug up an ancient grave.”
“So what? The only thing inside was a bunch of rose petals. Are those lethal to you faeries too?”
Cruz smirked, but then his expression grew somber as he peered beyond me at the burial site surrounded by the rowan trees. “There was a body underneath those rose petals.”
My jaw came unhinged. “Where did you put it?”
“By the time I was alerted and sent to retrieve it, it was gone.”
“Gone where? Did my mother hide—” I clapped my hand in front of my mouth. “That’s why you killed her. Because she wouldn’t tell you where she put it.”
“I did not kill your mother.”
“But—”
“Your mother was already dead when I got here.”
“Another faerie then. It was another faerie’s fault,” I said, my voice pulsing with anger.
“No.” The word pierced the night like the tip of an arrow. “What was inside the coffin killed your mother.”
“You mean the corpse?”
“Your mother could read Gottwa, couldn’t she?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s a yes or no answer, Catori.”
“Yes.”
“Then she resurrected the body.”
The instrumental music playing inside the house felt like it had gotten louder. “What?”
“Hey, Cat,” Blake called out. “I was looking everywhere for you.”
I whirled around and almost screamed for him to get back inside, but I’d lost my voice.
“Forgot something, Mason?” Blake asked, walking up to us.
“Yes.” The glow of Cruz’s exposed skin grew brighter, as though he were about to burst into flames. Or fry Blake with a flick of his fingers. I stumbled toward my friend and latched onto his arm. Cruz couldn’t hurt him if I held on to him, right?
“You’re as cold as a block of ice, Cat. Here.” He draped his jacket over my shoulders, and then squeezed me against him, rubbing my back with his palm. “How long have you been out here?”
“I don’t know,” I said, through rattling teeth. “Cruz forgot his wallet. He just came to get it.”
Cruz’s eyes glimmered in the night. Could fire shoot out of his eyes too?
As he treaded past me, he said, “I need you to help me find it, Catori. That’s why I’m back.”
Blake snorted. “You need help finding your wallet? Come on, man. That’s lame.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to find it on your own,” I told Cruz. “And once you do, please just go away. With it.”
“Things like to hide from me.”
Blake’s good eye shifted from me to Cruz. Perhaps if I explained that wallet was code for corpse, he wouldn’t be as baffled. Or perhaps he’d be even more so.
“Where’s your cousin?” Blake asked as Cruz hopped up the porch steps.
He slowed down.
“She left,” I said.
“She was weird,” Blake said.
“Very.”
“One of the twins has gone berserk inside. She’s been telling everyone how gross your—” He paused. “Sorry. You don’t need to hear this.”
“Telling everyone what?” I asked, pressing away to face him. Cruz still hadn’t moved. He was listening.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Just spit it out, Blake.”
He held my gaze, and then he didn’t. He looked away and I knew it was about my mother.
“Shiloh said her body was decomposing. But it’s not, Cat. Your mom looks beautiful,” Blake said stiffly. Surely paying Cruz a compliment was hard on him. “Aylen brought her upstairs to your bedroom. Everyone has calmed down,” Blake said. “So let’s go back in. Our friends want to see you.”
Before he could try slinging his arm around my shoulder again, I shot forward, past Cruz, reaching for the doorknob before he could. He bounded backward, yanking his hand as far away as he could. Because of the necklace. For some reason, that made me smile. I raced to the second floor. Everyone watched me. Dad even asked where I’d been. I just climbed those creaky steps before the fae could get to Shiloh. As soon as I was in my bedroom, I slammed the door shut.
Aylen slapped her hand against her heart. “Cat, you just scared the bejeezus out of me.”
“Can I talk to Shiloh alone a minute?” I asked, walking over to my window. Was Cruz still outside or had he come in after me?
“Okay, but—is it about—what happened?” Aylen asked in a choppy, hushed voice. Shiloh had her headphones plugged into her tablet and she was watching something. “I just managed to calm her down. Please don’
t talk to her about…it.”
I was about to tell Aylen not to worry, when a knock resounded on the door. She opened the door and grinned at Cruz. I think she even batted her purple mascara-laden eyelashes.
“What?” I snapped.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I need Catori’s help with something in the morgue.”
I shook my head. “No way,” I said.
“It’s really urgent,” Cruz said.
“You have two minutes,” I huffed, walking past my still-smiling aunt and my still-oblivious cousin. When I passed him, he stuck his back flush against the wall. The pendant slammed against my chest as I sprang down the stairs, walked through the packed kitchen. People moved out of my way as I pulled open the white door. Conversations stopped, yet no one followed me downstairs. Not even Blake.
I waited for Cruz with my arms folded tightly over my chest. When the noise from upstairs dimmed and footsteps echoed, I knew he was coming.
“You can’t tell anyone what I just told you, Catori.”
“I was only going to tell Shiloh. It concerns her now.”
“Yes, but knowledge of us…it comes at a price.”
I tried to appear nonplussed, but sucked at hiding my emotions. “What price?”
“When she finds out what she is, she becomes a faehunter.”
“She’s nine.”
“Age plays no role in what you are. As long as she’s not aware, she stays off the grid. Do you understand? You can’t hunt what you don’t know about. And you can’t be hunted by what doesn’t know about you.”
I gulped. “I’m going to be hunted?”
Cruz nodded. “But I can protect you from faes if you help me find”—he tipped his chin toward the still open casket with the still very pink rose petals—“her.”
“Her? You can read Gottwa?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it’s a woman?”
“Those twelve graves, Catori, we’ve had our eyes on them for two centuries now. We know everything there is to know about your ancestors. And the one your mother brought back…her name was Gwenelda.”
My blood felt like it was draining out of my body and pooling at my feet. “I talked to her.”
“I know. I saw you.”
“Did she kill Mom?” I murmured.
He lowered his gaze. “She had to take a life to come back.”
Suddenly, the necklace felt like it was choking me. I wrenched it off and threw it inside the casket. It landed noiselessly on top of the rose petals. Cruz placed his hand on top of mine and the heat from his body invaded mine. I flung his hand away. “Just because I’m choosing not to wear a murderer’s gift doesn’t mean I trust you. I just hate you less than I hate her.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Will you help me stop her from waking the others?”
“Yes.”
“My people will be grateful to you.”
“I’m not doing it for your people. I’m doing it for my mother. But in exchange, your people will forget I exist. You will forget I exist. Deal?”
Cruz nodded ever so slowly.
CHAPTER 9 – THE ARREST
One of Dad’s oldest friends was playing his cello as Mom’s casket was carried out of the house toward her final resting place. I wanted to tell him to stop as each note made my heart and my head throb.
Through my dark sunglasses and puffy eyes, I could barely make out where I was stepping. Even though it was mid-morning, it looked as though the sun hadn’t risen yet. The sky was the sort of muted gray that made everything appear dull and flat. The elements were mourning Mom, along with every single citizen in Rowan. The headstones had disappeared behind the ocean of black-clad bodies. Tissues were clutched in almost every hand. I counted them as I followed the procession. It distracted me from watching the casket gliding over the pallbearers’ heads.
Dad wrapped his hand around mine, and held it like he used to when I was a little girl and we’d skip down Morgan Street to buy ice cream from Mrs. Matty’s little shop. Mrs. Matty whose lips Mom had forgotten to sew shut. Mom whose lips Cruz hadn’t sewed shut. A sob broke loose, making me lose count of the tissues. Dad squeezed my hand.
When we arrived in front of the dark hole, he let go. He helped guide the coffin down, and then he stared around the graveyard and took a deep breath. “Our town is like no other,” he said, his voice booming, yet weighty with emotion. “It is united and caring and supportive. To call us a town does not do us justice. We are a family. My parents used to say there existed no better place to live than Rowan. It took me leaving to realize this. Unlike Nova. She never felt the need to leave because she knew that this place, that all of you, were irreplaceable.” A soft smile settled over Dad’s lips that seemed thinner than usual, emaciated like him. “I wish to send Nova off with a reminder.” He crouched down and placed his palm over the casket. “You were the most extraordinary woman and wife. Why you ever said yes to a man like me remains a mystery, but how lucky I am that you accepted to marry me all those years ago.”
An arm wrapped around me. Blake’s. I rested my cheek against his shoulder.
“You were the love of my life, Nova,” Dad continued. “You gave me twenty-four years of uninterrupted happiness. And you gave me the most wonderful daughter—with one hell of a personality, I might add. But even for that, I am grateful.”
I flicked the tears off my cheeks with my fingertips.
“The day we married, I carried you across the threshold of our house. You laughed and ordered me to put you down right away, and I did, because I could never say no to you. No one could ever say no to you.”
Dad’s remark elicited smiles from the crowd. It was true. Mom always got her way. Except with me. I could be so tough with her.
“I hadn’t wanted to put you down that day, Nova. Today, I carry you across a new threshold, and again, I don’t want to put you down, but again, I have no choice.” He squeezed his mouth shut for a long, terrible second. “I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye,” he murmured, contemplating his reflection in the varnished wood. Then he looked up and held out his hands, and I stepped out of Blake’s embrace and into my father’s.
As Mom’s shaman took over, wishing her a safe journey to the Great Spirit’s side, Aylen put her arms around us. Her acrylic nails dug into my neck. When I couldn’t take the pinching sensation anymore, I wiggled out from the group hug.
Dad collapsed onto his knees in the snow, raked handfuls of dirt mixed with snow from the mound next to the hole, and cast it over Mom’s coffin. His face was streaked with tears and his light eyes were barely slits. He seized more and more dirt and flung it over Mom. I tried laying my hand on his shoulder but he slung it off. Perplexed, I looked around. The music stopped. His friend laid down his instrument and pushed through the crowd. Others followed him. Together, they heaved him up and away, whispering soothing words in his ear.
Bending at the waist, I cupped my hands and scooped cold dirt that I threw in turn. It glimmered as it drifted through the air, but the sparkle blunted when it landed in the dark pit.
Without music, the graveyard was silent, so very silent.
I’ll find you, Gwenelda, and I will make you pay, I thought. Maybe she was here. As I looked around, I spotted a familiar face near the property’s gate. Cruz was leaning against his fancy car like the first time he’d appeared in my life. I walked toward him. No one was paying attention to me anymore. The attendees were busy taking turns lobbing handfuls of dirt on top of the coffin. Instead of heading inside to shoulder my father, I broke into a slow jog toward Cruz.
“Did you find her?” I asked once I’d reached him.
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To pay my respects.”
I snorted.
“And to see how you were holding up,” he said.
“How kind of you,” I said, a tad frostily.
“Will you take a ride with me?” When I made no move toward the passeng
er door, he said, “There’s more I’d like to discuss, and what I have to tell you has to stay private.”
Before I could come to my senses, I got in. “Don’t lock the doors,” I warned him.
“They lock automatically when the car starts, but by all means, keep your fingers on the handle. If you pump it twice, it releases the latch.”
“And don’t drive too fast.”
“Anything else, Miss Price?” he asked, giving me a sidelong glance as he drove away, down the cobbled path that turned into a dirt road.
In the rearview mirror, I spotted Blake watching the car slip away. At least one person knew where I was—in case something happened. My phone vibrated in my coat pocket. Probably Blake. I let it go to voicemail.
Everything was whitewashed around us, as though Rowan had been soaked in bleach, from the rooftops to the tree branches to the fields.
“What is it you want to talk about?” I asked.
“That ancestor of yours, Gwenelda. If we’re going to hunt her down together, you need to know a few things about her.”
“I’m listening.”
“She’s powerful.”
“I’m guessing you mean more than just having the sight.”
He nodded. “She can make people do things. We call it having the influence. It won’t work on you, though.”
“Why? Because I have the sight?”
“Yes.”
“Can she influence faeries?”
“Only the weak-blooded ones.”
“Weak-blooded?”
“The ones who have mixed with humans for too many generations. The purer our blood, the more magic we have.”
I snorted. “That must be healthy.”
Cruz shot me a half-smile.
“What else can she do?” I asked.
“She can control things with her mind.”
“Like telekinesis?”
“Yes. But I don’t think she’s strong enough to do that yet.”
“Can I do those things too?”
“No, but I think you might have the influence. Those straight As you got during high school, your perfect SAT score, your freshman year 4.0 GPA…maybe you’re smart, but no one is that smart.”
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