I watched the crowd. Some people drained wine from glasses around the tables, and the rest burned off recently consumed calories on the dance floor. What was wrong with them? The answer hit me like a freight train; the crowd was bewitched. It was the only answer. Urser Estate had supplied the wine and Petra probably hexed the selection, so the entire crowd would fall under her spell. No one would notice anything if she didn’t want them to.
She was too smart to be captured.
“Drag her to the ocean, quick,” Cash ordered Tommy. “Check her body. Is there a book?”
I watched them drag Aunt Lucy’s body towards the water’s edge wondering why the smell of Lavender grew stronger when her body was getting further away? Something wasn’t right.
Behind you!
Pain lanced through my head and I fell to the sand. Agony spread to my extremities. The shutters of my eyelids closed once, twice, and then everything faded to black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DARKNESS.
The tip of my nose tingled from the cold and my nostrils burned with a musty smell. The drip of water nearby set off a rhythmic echo. I was somewhere big, cold and hollow. I lay on my side on a damp, rocky floor and cried out when I rolled onto my back. My bones must have been removed because I found it difficult—no, scratch that—unbearable to move. I hurt all over.
I peeled my eyes open, one at a time and blinked in the dim haze. Thousands of white stalactites blurred into focus—spiky piranha teeth ready to chomp down. I sniffed, then winced. My chest hurt.
I was in a cave. What the hell had happened?
“You were dead. I checked your pulse, and you weren’t breathing. I thought she pushed you too hard, but there you are as pretty as ever,” a raspy voice slid through my consciousness. My head swiveled to locate its source. White-hot knives slashed through my neck and bile rose to the back of my throat.
I flexed my fingers and clenched my fists. The pain was receding. I was healing. I let my hands travel to my legs and bunched the denim. The fabric felt gritty, and crispy bits of something caught on my rough fingers. Probably dried blood. I pushed the tears away and concentrated on the drip, breathing to the beat. I can do this, I thought. But my body trembled.
The last thing I remembered, I was sitting on the sand, watching Cash and Tommy drag my aunt’s body into the ocean.
And the smell of Lavender.
It had been a trap. Petra must have switched bodies while I’d had my Woodstock moment.
Cash had killed the wrong witch. Perhaps a familiar.
I recalled bits and pieces of the evening and they were all horrific. I had no idea that a concentrated dose of life-force would fuddle me up so much. But no one had seemed to notice. Except Cash and Tommy. They saw it. Cash felt it, for crying out loud. The memory of the effervescent energy sent sparks of pleasure shooting into my body, quickly followed by an ache, a need. It had felt good, better than good—addictive. Was that how junkies felt?
I touched the throbbing spot on my head and winced. A warm sticky mess stuck to my fingers.
“She thinks I won’t say anything. She probably thought you were dead. But it’s you. It’s really you.”
I startled. Someone was there. My eyes searched the cave. The raspy voice hadn’t been in my head. It was real. I was in the dark part of a cave, and the voice came from outside. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust—it was daytime! I’d been out of it all night.
An emaciated shadow slumped against the rocky wall outside. It had a hairy, castaway look, fully bearded with raggedy clothes. His energy was weak, but erratic.
He groaned. “So hungry… oh, so hungry.”
I licked my own cracked lips. “Who are you?”
Hissing laughter echoed into the dark expanse of cave behind me. “Who am I? Who is anyone, anymore?”
Using one skinny, deformed arm after the other, he dragged himself to the cave’s entrance. His laborious process added to his sinister demeanor as his weak limbs scraped across the rocks.
“It’s who I was that might interest you more,” he said. “Three years is a long time to be stuck in a cave.”
He hummed a familiar tune through shriveled lips, chuckling occasionally as though the song was a big joke.
I knew those eyes.
Neurones fired in my brain, scrambling to put together the jumbled information: the familiar brown eyes and haunting tune; he’d been stuck in the cave for three years; and he knew me.
He laughed with a mouth full of holes where teeth should have been, smacking his gums and spraying spit into the air. As if a choir of mad men sat behind me, the cave amplified and echoed his hyena cackle. I turned away to cover my ears but with every vibration, my heart surged. It pumped faster, beating against my rib cage and knocking between my lungs. My pain lessened. Like a receding storm, the agony faded to a cool breeze. The fast circulation had assisted my healing.
Note to self—for super-fast healing, scare the shit out of self.
I flexed my arms and toes finding little pain then sat up and eyed off the stranger. His eyes bored through me from under wiry brows. Sensing the weakness in his aura, I felt I had the advantage. His energy danced all over the place, but it was frail. It gave me the confidence to stiffly move into a crouch and dart past the mad man, wincing at the rocky floor under my feet. He scuttled past me like a hermit crab. Now we had traded places, he in the cave’s shadows, and me in the opening. I stood at the bottom of a hole surrounded by a rocky cliff face that reached forty or so feet to a forest above. Dappled sunshine blinked through the trees, showing the first pale pink of a sunset. I’d lost an entire day stuck in that hole. The smell of eucalyptus did nothing to calm my nerves, nor did the early evening bird calls. The trees encircling the top of the hole swirled in a sudden breeze and made me dizzy. I braced my hand against the rough wall.
Ew, fucking gross. Sticky spider webs. I suppressed the urge to scream and whimpered instead. I hated spiders.
I turned back to the man and studied him while he seemed to examine me. A crow cawed from above and a flutter of leaves fell as it took to the sky.
“She knows you’re alive now. The bird will tell her.”
“What?”
The mad man sang with a squeaky voice. He patted his bloated tummy to the beat and looked at me sideways, then kept singing… lyrics to the Prince song, When Doves Cry.
He couldn’t possibly know I liked that artist. It was a coincidence, a mad coincidence, or perhaps I still dreamed.
You’re not dreaming.
But his voice sounded familiar, too. I stared and slowly lowered to a squat.
No.
Recognition flooded me.
“Oh, no. Shit! Steve?” I whispered through slitted fingers.
His lips curved into a gummy smile and he gave me a half-hearted flourish. “In the flesh.” He looked down at his skin and bones. “Well, sort of.”
That sent him into a new tirade of high-pitched laughter echoed by his choir of mad men.
“I thought you were dead. We all thought you’d jumped off a cliff, and…” I rubbed my neck, thinking about the collar. Fury engulfed me. “Everyone thought it was my fault! I nearly burned.”
Steve. Stuck at the bottom of a forty-foot cave, hundreds of kilometers away from where he disappeared. For three years?
“How are you here?” I asked.
“It’s all your fault. I don’t know how I ever loved you. I’ve been missing you, loving you all this time and the first thing you do is blame me for your pain? Well, I got news for you Roo-Roo. This is all because of you.” He jabbed his bony finger at me and it felt like he stabbed me straight through the heart.
Shame stole my guilt. He was right. He’d been stuck in a hole for three years, and the first thing I thought of was myself.
What a fucking bitch.
The GPS signal on my anklet blinked and my spirits lifted. Maybe they would find me. I snorted. Who? I’d offended Tommy, violated Cash’s trust and sc
rewed up the whole operation. Why would they come looking for me? I yanked off my GPS anklet and turned the smooth surface over in my hands. I didn’t deserve to be found. My friendship had almost killed Alvin, my sister was pretty much dead, and now Aunt Lucy was too. I could have killed Cash with my spontaneous injection of energy. Who did I think I was, God? I glanced to my left. And, the only loving boyfriend I’d ever had was withering away in front of me. He didn’t deserve it.
“I’m so sorry, Steve.” A rush of air escaped my lips. “It’s all my fault, I’m a waste of space.”
I hurled the GPS anklet against the rocky wall, screaming with all my might. It bounced off and landed on the ground unharmed. Argh! I couldn’t even do that right. On instinct, I shot a bolt of concentrated energy from my fingers at the GPS tracker and watched it disintegrate into a thousand bits of rubbery dust. Whoa. I blinked, surprised at my accuracy.
It’s better for everyone that I stay off the radar. First, I’d get out of there and return Steve to his family. Then, I’d—
“Wait,” I interrupted my own thought. “Did Petra put you in this hole three years ago?” I thought Petra had arrived in town just before she attacked me at the bar, but maybe not.
“I haven’t always been in this hole,” he said.
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to think you look pretty tasty right now.” He looked at me with hunger in his eyes, and it wasn’t the sexual kind.
Oh boy, how would I explain to Steve’s psycho, witch-hating parents that I had nothing to do with this? They were right, I was the spawn of evil. I braced my hand on the wall and bowed my head. I should’ve burned.
“Where is Petra now?” I whispered.
“Why did you leave me?” Steve groaned and grabbed his stomach. He struggled to the cave’s entrance and sat, rolling his head from side to side.
He croaked out a few more verses of When Doves Cry.
Oh Steve. He’d been the best looking guy in the neighborhood, and I’d had a secret crush on him all through high school. Two years after graduation, I’d bumped into him at a nightclub and everything changed. We’d bonded over our mutual disdain for our parents, and he’d treated me like a princess. I thought I was in love. But then we’d had sex. And then he wouldn’t let go of me even if that meant keeping me by force.
“Steve, tell me how this happened to you.”
“She came to me one night and said she could make you love me again. I believed her. But then… she locked me away. I was in darkness for a long time. She would come all sweetness and sugar, asking questions about you, always with the questions: who are your friends, what food do you like, what do you like to wear?” His liquid eyes fastened on me. “She wanted to know everything.”
I’d put down Aunt Lucy’s progressive sickness to her smoking, but Petra must have possessed her body for years. It made sense, Petra had kidnapped Steve and made it look like his disappearance was my fault. She didn’t want to kill me; she wanted my secrets, but she needed more time. So she orchestrated a witchcraft accusation. With the lack of evidence, I was ensured probation and a collar. My mind reeled. Had she known I was Nephilim and the collar would block my aura sensing capabilities?
When I told her I was moving out, she must have freaked. My aunt’s body was failing, and so she transferred into Leila. But when she first attacked me at The Cauldron, she acted as though she’d never met me. Had that been a ruse or was she just systematically ruling out all the things I was not?
No. I shook my head. There was more to it. She’d dumped me in this cave, something that would have killed anyone else, but Nephilim, Players—we all healed fast, so our bodies could handle the souls of gods. Only one thing remained consistent. She wanted to exchange blood with me.
I turned to Steve. “Has she mentioned she wants my blood?”
Steve opened his mouth, but was cut off when someone launched a pebble at his head. “Shut up, Steve.” A childish voice cut through the air from somewhere above. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
An explosion of squawks came from above and we looked up to see a row of crows gawking with beady eyes. I ducked as another pebble whipped from the trees to hit Steve on the head. He whimpered, scuttling deeper into the darkness.
I looked up. Leaves rustled on a fern as a small body retreated from the ledge. I noticed a twisted and warped aura and recalled the little boy at the festival who’d snapped at Petra.
“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”
A crow squawk answered me and I shivered. Those birds weren’t natural.
“Steve, who else is here?”
Steve was silent, cowering in the shadows. The thought of him clearly in pain tugged at my heartstrings. I had a role to play in this, a responsibility to see it right. “Steve, I can help you get better. Please tell me when Petra is coming back, and we can make sure you’re all fixed and ready get out of here with me. Then you can go home to your parents. They’re in town you know, they’ve missed you.”
He shuffled closer. I couldn’t see his features in the twilight. “That’s what she said too. She’s been saying it for three years. At least, that’s how long I think it’s been. I stopped counting.” He held up his arms. Fine silvered lines marred his skin from wrist to shoulder. He’d scratched a calendar into his flesh. He shuffled forward, ready to hear more.
“Let me help you,” I crouched and reached out to him.
“Don’t you get it?” He shirked back. “I just want it to end. I keep trying but they keep bringing me back. Can you let me die?”
I palmed my sockets and shook my head.
“Kill me, Roo. Make sure I’m dead. Agree to this and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” His pale tongue flicked out to lick his lips, then he reached for me, skeletal fingers imprinting on my arms. My skin sang when our bodies connected, I could feel his pain sliding down to connect with me like a waterfall, and it stole my breath away. “Send my soul to a better place, please, Roo-Roo.”
I nodded, and he dropped his weak hold on me. I was the cause of his pain, and it made me want to do whatever he wanted. I wished a healing hex would work, but wasn’t sure his body could regrow teeth and untwist bones. It could end up being another form of torture. If killing him was the best thing I could do for him, then so be it. I nodded again, more sure of myself this time, then wiped my eyes. Toughen up, princess.
“Petra has been possessing Aunt Lucy’s body for the last three years hasn’t she?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Who is that kid up there?”
“It’s her Grimoire. I don’t like him, he’s mean.” He cowered behind his hands. “Don’t let him near me.”
The nurse, Sabina, had spoken about a Grimoire, but she’d said it was a book. Cash also wanted a book.
“How can a book of spells be a person?” I asked.
“She altered his DNA so he wouldn’t age and then infused him with all of her secrets. That’s how she’s been taunting me all these years, saying—”
“Shut up, Steve.” The little voice was higher pitched, this time. “I swear to God if you say anything, I’ll kill you myself.”
Debris fell down and landed on my head, loose leaves and dried twigs. I tried to brush it off, but it tangled in my hair. The boy peered at us over the ledge, waving his little fist. When he saw me, he scurried out of sight.
“Don’t let him near me, please.” Steve scrambled out of his spot to clutch me like a child. He hid behind my legs and buried his face into the fabric of my jeans. “I’ll tell you everything, please. She’s working for someone else, but she wanted you all to herself. You pissed her off, and she tried to kill you.” His fingers dug into me. “But you survived. She’ll come back.”
I detangled his hands so I could see him better, but his aura had remained steady as he spoke. Steve was telling the truth. Dread dropped heavily onto my chest. “Who is Petra working for Steve?”
Tears streaked his cheeks. He open
ed his mouth to speak—
A crack echoed through the forest and the cave. Steve’s chest exploded, spraying me with a warm sticky mess. The birds added to the bedlam, screeching and fluttering. I spluttered and tried to breathe without sucking in drops of blood.
Steve’s energy dissipated into nothingness.
I grasped his falling body, searching for his energy source, but it was gone.
“NO!” I cried, wetness sliding down my cheeks. “Steve.”
His body slipped to the ground, blood streaming until he was empty.
A surge in the energy above pulled at me and my head snapped up to see the kid. His arms dangled over the precipice, holding a gun. He turned away but, even in the dark, I caught the grin and the way it puffed up his cheeks. He did it, and he was happy.
I backed away from the mess at my feet. A familiar pressure grew inside of me and my senses ignited. I heard everything: the dripping water; the rustling trees; and the child’s breath as he snickered above. Heat rose like lava and bubbled to my extremities. It hit my fingers and kept going, pouring out of the tips. I pointed at the kid and the current zoomed from my febrile body until its invisible claws embedded in him, and then I clenched, grabbing hold. I pulled.
The brat struggled and his face grew blotchy. He grasped at the ferns, trying desperately to avoid what waited for him in the pit—me. I pulled harder. I didn’t care that he was human. I didn’t even care that he was young. I only cared that he was part of Petra’s depraved plan and that he’d killed Steve.
The crows dropped from their branch to scream at me, hopping next to the boy in a wild panic and inflaming me to bursting point. I released more. My muscles tightened, ready to snap, and the pain made me want to scream. Instead, I heaved until I stumbled back and, with a sudden lack of resistance, the little devil fell from his perch. His body bounced off the rocky walls and landed with a sickening, wet thud at my feet. The crows took flight, leaving me in a cocoon of silence.
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