“How do you know about my grades?”
“I was briefed before coming.”
“Faeries have a whole file on me?”
“They keep track of…potential hunters.”
I mentally ran over every exam I’d ever taken. My driving test popped up. During the exam, I’d been so nervous that I’d forgotten to turn on my windshield wipers. I had driven with my nose glued to the windshield to see through the torrential downpour. It had only occurred to me to turn them on after I’d bumped into the rear fender of Mr. Hamilton’s car. He’d been incensed, slamming his car door and trampling through the mud to pound on my window. I’d apologized profusely, after which he’d told me not to worry. Had I sent him brainwaves to make him forgive me or had he calmed down because of my apology? Considering what a grouch Mr. Hamilton was—still is—I suspected I’d made him forgive me. Just like I suspected I’d made the DMV instructor award me a driving license I hadn’t merited.
I squinted at a snow-lined hedge, attempting to shift its branches. Nothing happened. “I can’t move things with my mind,” I said after some time.
“It’s a tough skill to master.”
“Can you do it?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it’s tough?”
“Don’t you want to know what your ancestors’ greatest power was?”
I suspected Cruz didn’t want to talk about his shortcomings. “Of course I do.”
“They could kill us,” Cruz said.
“Um…are you, like, immortal?”
“No.”
“Then why is that such a feat?”
“Because only old age can kill faeries.”
“What? You can’t die of cancer? Or in a plane crash?”
He shook his head. “We don’t get cancer. And when planes crash, and one of us happens to be on it, we fly out.”
“Even if it blows up?”
“We’re made of fire, so that doesn’t bother us.”
“And you can’t kill each other?”
“We can, but we try not to.”
“How can faehunters kill you?”
“I’d rather not tell you. I wouldn’t want to give you any ideas.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. Anyway, Gwenelda can’t fatally harm faeries yet. She’s not strong enough, even though she’s a hell of a lot stronger than what she should be. Linus thinks—”
“Linus? As in Linus Wood? You told him about—” I didn’t bother finishing my question. “He’s a faerie, isn’t he?”
Cruz glanced at me, then fixed his gaze back on the road. He didn’t have to say yes.
“What does Linus Wood think?” I asked.
“He thinks it’s because she’s been hibernating. Faehunters believed hibernation increased their power. That’s why they buried themselves alive underneath rose petals. To grow their power.”
I was about to tell him I knew, but clamped my mouth shut. I didn’t want to share my mother’s book until I’d read every page. In case there were interesting tidbits on faeries—like how to kill them. I kept my gaze fastened to the pale landscape outside, which was becoming brighter now that some sun was leaking through the thick clouds. “What do you think?”
“I believe she’s strong because she absorbed your mother’s life. A relative is like pure heroin versus street heroin.”
My gut twisted at the comparison. “So her next move will be to dig up another grave and influence someone to open it. And preferably another relative.” Abruptly, I spun toward him. “Shit, Cruz. She’s going to go after Aylen, or one of her daughters.”
“Shiloh can’t be influenced.”
“But Satyana and Aylen can. What the hell are we doing driving around? Turn back.”
“Gwenelda’s not going to do it with that many people around. She’ll wait until they leave.”
“Which is only a few hours away,” I said, taking out my cell phone and scrolling through my contacts for Aylen’s number. She needed to leave Rowan immediately.
Cruz seized the phone from my fingers and stuffed it inside his jacket pocket.
“I need to warn them!”
“How exactly were you going to phrase it? Our long-lost ancestor woke up, killed Mom, and is coming after one of us?”
I leaned across the elbow rest and tried to grab my phone from his pocket, but Cruz swerved the car, which pinned me against the door. “Give it back.”
“I will once you calm down.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Give it back, right away.”
He smiled. “You’re trying to influence me.”
“No, I’m—I am?”
“Yes.”
“How do you even know that?”
“I can feel it inside my brain. It tingles.”
My forehead unfurrowed. “You can feel it, yet you can’t be influenced?”
He nodded.
I was getting sidetracked. “Can I get my phone back?” I asked, my tone cooler but still crisp.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, he fished it out and tossed it on my lap. “No impulsive actions, deal?”
I didn’t say deal, but I also didn’t try calling my aunt. For now. Instead, I toyed with the small apparatus. “Tell me about the gassen.”
“I haven’t heard that word in nearly a century,” he said.
“A century?” I squeaked. “How old are you?”
“Two decades over one hundred. The equivalent of twenty-four human years. Five human years represents one year for us.”
“You’re a hundred and twenty!”
“Yes.”
“You were born before cars,” I mused.
“Just before.” A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “What do you want to know about our dust?”
“How does it work?”
He glanced at me. “We cloak things and it creates whatever illusion we have in our mind. I’m sure you’ve heard those old tales in which faeries played tricks on people, giving them gold coins that turned out to be chicken eggs. Or the mirages of an oasis that certain men saw after days of walking in a desert. Also faerie work. The illusions only last until we need our dust again. One illusion fades to make place for another.”
“So now that Mom is underground, you got your dust back?”
He dipped his chin into his neck, which I took as a nod.
“Are there others like me and Shiloh?”
“Your tribe was the last one.”
“But there were others?”
“Ages ago, yes.”
“What happened to them?”
“They died,” he said.
“They died, or they were killed?”
His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel. “We trick people; we don’t kill them.”
“Not even the ones who can end your lives?”
His silence was answer enough.
“So Negongwa’s tribe was the only one that…in a way…made it out alive?”
“The Lost Clan.”
“What?”
“That’s how we refer to them since we never thought they’d wake up.”
“Why didn’t you set fire to their graves? You know, to make sure they didn’t rise?” I asked.
His eyes flashed. “They built their caskets from rowan wood. Faerie fire can’t penetrate it.”
“Why didn’t you ask humans to get rid of the graves?”
“Because only a family member can dig them up, and no family member would ever have betrayed their own to aid us.”
“Until now,” I said, my voice low.
“You’re avenging your mother, Catori. You’re not doing this to help me…or any other faerie.”
“It still makes me a traitor.”
Cruz rested his hand on top of mine. It felt like the fire from underneath his skin was penetrating mine. But there were no sparks this time. Curious, I raised my fingers to his jaw and touched it to see if it was unnaturally hot too.
“What are you doing?” he ask
ed, his voice husky.
“The fire inside, is that what makes your skin so hot?” I glided my hand down to his neck. Goose bumps rose over his skin. “I thought you’d actually burned me the other night. I saw sparks.”
He swallowed, the tendons in his neck more taut than the string of a bow.
“How come there are no sparks now?” I asked.
He turned toward me, his eyes the most intense shade of green I’d ever seen. “The other night, I—”
A siren wailed right behind the car.
“Fuck,” he growled.
I turned around. A police cruiser was on our tail. “Were you speeding?” I asked, as Cruz slowed down.
“I don’t know. I was distracted,” he muttered.
“Cat!” Blake yelled, slamming the cruiser door and racing toward me, along with our hefty sheriff.
Blake yanked on my door handle. When it didn’t open, he started banging on the window like a maniac. Stunned, I didn’t pump the handle. I didn’t move. But the doors must have unlocked, because Blake unhooked my seat belt, plucked me from the car seat, and shoved me behind his back.
“He’s a murderer, Cat,” Blake yelled. “A fucking murderer!”
I blanched. “Y-you got it wrong, Blake,” I croaked. “He didn’t kill Mom.”
Blake frowned so deeply that his eyebrows, which had been tattooed to replace the ones that would never grow back, met on his forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“Cruz Vega, you’re under arrest for the murder of Henry Mason,” the cop said.
I pushed past Blake just as Sheriff Jones snapped a pair of handcuffs on Cruz’s wrists. Where the metal touched his skin, it became orange and smoke curled up. He was melting the metal.
“Vega?” I croaked. “I thought—I thought your last name was Mason.”
“Henry Mason was the medical examiner who was supposed to come prepare your mother,” Blake explained.
His voice sounded like it was coming from very far away.
“This guy…he’s some sick impersonator. To think you were in a car with him. Shit, Cat, I thought—I thought I’d never get you back.”
Cruz faced me from the other side of the car. His eyes burned an electric shade of green.
“You killed—” My voice dried up in my throat. I swallowed and shivered. “You killed someone?”
He didn’t say no. He didn’t say anything. He just kept his eyes locked on mine. He’d said faeries only tricked people, but he’d lied. Faeries killed too.
CHAPTER 10 – THE WOODS
Cruz had been taken into custody and locked in a cell in Rowan’s tiny jail. Sheriff Jones was ecstatic because this was one of the first times his jail was being used, and because arresting Cruz had turned him into an instant, local celebrity.
“Why do you think he impersonated a medical examiner?” Cass asked, as she set a cheeseburger in front of me. It glistened with oil.
“I didn’t order this,” I told her, pushing the plate away.
She thrust it back toward me. “Just pretend to eat it.” She moved her eyeballs toward the kitchen. “Blake’s been on my case about making sure you didn’t leave here on an empty stomach.”
The sheriff and Mr. Hamilton, who sat a few tables behind me, were discussing the body that was uncovered in the middle of the woods. “There were burn marks all over it, but the snow kept it in pretty good shape considering.”
I pressed my burger away. Definitely not hungry anymore.
“That’s sick,” Mr. Hamilton said, readjusting his tweed newsboy cap. Apparently, he’d gotten it in Scotland, on the set of one of his movies, but Blake had seen the label inside, and it read made in Michigan. “I still don’t get what the kid’s endgame was. Do you think he was planning on killing more of us?”
“Who knows? I tried interrogating him after I booked him, but he didn’t say anything. He just asked for his phone call.”
“Who did he call?” Mr. Hamilton asked.
“What can I get you, Sheriff?” Cass asked, wiping down their table. “Another coffee?”
“Nah, I’m good, Cass. I need to get back to the jailhouse.”
“I’ll take a BLT,” Hamilton said. “With extra mayo.”
“But you just had a steak,” Cass said.
Mr. Hamilton placed his elbows on the table. “Did I ask you for dietary advice, Cassidy, or did I ask for a BLT?”
“Coming right up.” As she walked past my table, she whispered, “Sheesh,” and blew her bangs out of her eyes.
“So who’d he call?” Hamilton asked, lacing his fingers together.
“He spoke some weird language, so I didn’t get a name.”
“Probably a lawyer.”
“Probably. He said that person would be able to explain. Not sure how anyone can give a good reason for homicidal identity theft.” He got up, zipped his jacket over his paunch, and tapped Hamilton’s skinny shoulder. “Catch you later, old sport.”
As the door of Bee’s Place jingled, I shot up and dashed out after the sheriff. “Sheriff Jones,” I called out.
“Yes?” He stopped walking.
“Can I talk to him?”
“To the prisoner?”
I nodded.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’re not sure yet what sort of person we’re dealing with.”
“Please. I just need to ask him something about my mother.”
His small eyes ran over my face. “Heard your dad’s thinking of pulling her out of the ground. You know…to check that he didn’t, um…molest her.”
“Cruz wouldn’t—”
“You’re defending him?”
“He’s not a necrophiliac,” I said.
“How would you know that?”
“I just know. Please, can I just have a minute with him?”
He tilted his face to the side. “Fine. One minute. Supervised by me. Wouldn’t want Derek telling me how irresponsible I was to let you within ten feet of him.”
One supervised minute wasn’t ideal, but it was better than none. We walked side by side down the dusk-covered main street toward the county jail. When we stepped into the brick building, the cop at the entrance shot out of his seat. It took me a second to realize it was Cass’s older brother, Jimmy. He’d changed his hair, or grown, or something.
“Has the prisoner been cooperating?”
“Nothing to report, sir,” Jimmy said.
“Buzz us through,” Sheriff Jones told him.
The metal door behind the desk unlocked. The sheriff pushed through and I trailed him in. The jail smelled like Lysol and was lit by several strips of neon lights. The cells weren’t cozy, but they weren’t dank like I’d pictured them.
“He’s in the last one,” the sheriff told me.
I was nearly surprised to see Cruz. Part of me had imagined he would have broken out already. His thick black lashes swept up over his bright eyes when he spotted me. He couldn’t have murdered a man, could he?
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said. Cruz was sitting on a cot with a mattress that looked no thicker than a shoe sole. With a sigh, he combed his hand through his wavy black hair, mussing it up. “What are you doing here, Catori?”
I approached the bars, but the sheriff cleared his throat, so I stopped. “Dad wants to exhume Mom’s body. He’s suffered enough. I don’t want him to be shocked by anything. She’ll be…visible, right?”
His lips set in a grim twist. “No.”
A voice erupted over a speaker above the secure doorway. “Sheriff, the prisoner’s visitor is here.”
Cruz rose.
The sheriff pointed his finger at him. “Don’t you move. Cat, you got your minute. I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”
I wasn’t ready to go. “You could’ve just taken his place without killing him,” I whispered.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Really? Then who did?” I hissed.
He hesitated. “I don’t know.” The hesitatio
n was a dead giveaway that he did know.
“Cat, now!” the sheriff said, holding the door open for me.
“What do I do if she comes back?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“Just act normal.”
I tugged on the hem of my black scarf. “She’ll see right through me.”
He stepped up to the bars. “No, she won’t. She can’t.”
“I told you not to move, Vega,” the sheriff barked. “Step back before I Taser you. And, Cat, don’t make me regret allowing you inside. Out!”
Biting my lip, I turned away from Cruz and treaded back down the corridor. Just this morning, we were burying Mom, and now I was visiting him in jail. When I emerged from the short corridor, I looked up and stumbled, catching myself on the edge of the front desk. Standing right there was America’s elusive heartthrob. The sheriff didn’t make a fool of himself like I had just done, but he did freeze at the sight of Cruz’s visitor.
“M-Mr. Wood?” he stammered. “You’re”—he turned toward Cruz’s cell—“You’re here for the suspect?”
“Yes,” Ace said, eyes on me. He tilted his head to the side.
He was more handsome than in the Vanity Fair article. Too handsome with his dark blond hair which he wore cropped on the sides and longer on the top, and his afternoon shadow that made his pretty boy face look rugged.
“I flew over as quickly as I could. Pleasure to meet you, officer,” he said with a smile.
It took me a second to realize he meant me. “Oh, I’m not a cop.”
“Then who are you?” he asked.
“I-I’m Catori Price.”
“Ah.”
“What, ah?” I asked.
“You’re prettier than on the pictures,” he said, extending his hand.
I fed my fingers through his, expecting his skin to be hot like Cruz’s, and it was. “What pictures?”
His smile faltered. “The ones on your Facebook wall,” he said.
“My Facebook profile is set on private,” I said, yanking my hand back and stuffing it inside my coat pocket.
Ace wasn’t smiling anymore. “Interesting.”
Had he felt I was a faehunter’s descendant? Is that what he meant by interesting?
“I’m sorry about the misunderstanding, Catori,” Ace said. “After I’m done here, would you allow me to stop by your house to apologize to your father?”
Rose Petal Graves (The Lost Clan Book 1) Page 6