Snow started falling. I looked up. Cold flakes landed in my open eyes. I blinked and looked down at the uneven ground that swelled underneath my boots. Everything would be white again. I kicked a pinecone out of the way and followed its trajectory with my eyes. It smacked right into something bright red. With the falling snow, it took me a second to realize it was a boot.
It moved. And then there were two boots. And two legs sticking out of the boots. And then the two legs bent and the body collapsed.
“Gwenelda,” I whispered, or shrieked. I wasn’t quite sure. I fell to my knees next to her.
She didn’t move. She didn’t speak.
I sucked in a breath and placed a hand on her back, against the flimsy black sweater she wore, to feel for a sign of life. When her back rose and fell, I let the trapped breath whoosh out of my mouth. I lifted my hand off of her and tried to roll her onto her back, but my hands slipped. I tried a second time, but again, they glided right off. That’s when I noticed that my skin was stained red, the same red as Gwenelda’s rubber boots. I twirled my hands in front of my eyes, attempting to connect the dots.
“You’re bleeding?” I asked stupidly.
I dragged her sweater up a few inches. The white T-shirt underneath was soaked in blood. It had even started to seep into the snow, turning it pink, like the strawberry shaved ice I bought at the fair each summer.
“I’m going to call an ambulance,” I said, pulling the sweater back down. “It’s going to be all right.”
“No ambulance,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“Why not?”
“Because doctors”—she planted one hand on the snow and pressed down hard; her fingers vanished in the white—“will not know”—she gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut—“how to close wounds inflicted by—” She flipped herself onto her back, letting out a deafening cry.
“Inflicted by what?” I asked.
She stared into my face. “By faeries,” she said, before losing consciousness.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered. “Gwenelda?” I shook her. I stopped when I saw more blood leaking out of her. Maybe I’d angered the wound. I placed my palm on her cheek and tapped slowly. “Gwenelda, wake up.”
She didn’t so I yanked my cell phone out my coat pocket, but it slipped through my fingers, disappearing into the pink snow besides Gwen’s body. I bent over and grabbed it. I was going to call my dad. No, wait, I couldn’t call him. He thought she was a madwoman, which she was—in a way. But I couldn’t just let her die. With shaky fingers, I dialed Blake’s number.
He didn’t pick up, so I tried him again.
“What?” he huffed.
“I need your help.”
“My help?” The pitch of his voice changed then, becoming almost strident when he spoke next, “Are you okay? Did something happen? I heard you walked back—”
“I’m okay. Remember my aunt?”
“The weird lady from Canada?”
“Yeah. That one. Well, she’s in really bad shape.”
“How bad?”
“There’s so much blood,” I whispered.
She wasn’t moving. Had she died? She said she could die of faerie wounds. Would it be so terrible if she had?
“Catori!” Blake sounded pissed. “Where are you?”
This woman could have killed my mother.
“Where are you?” I heard Blake shout.
Could have. Those two magic words jolted me out of my wicked deliberations. I looked around me, but there was so much snow falling that I couldn’t see anything. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember where I was when I bumped into Gwenelda.
“Holly’s field,” I said, lids flying open. “I’m in Holly’s field, by the woods.”
CHAPTER 15 – FIREFLIES
I took off my coat and placed it on top of Gwenelda’s unresponsive body. I shivered, so I walked briskly around, attempting to stay warm. Blake would be here in a few minutes.
“Catori?”
I snapped my neck in the direction of the voice. The grayish sketch of a body filled with color. “Cruz?”
“Are you all right?”
“I am, but she’s not.” I pointed to Gwenelda whose small body was slowly becoming invisible underneath the heavy snowfall.
“Who’s she?”
“Gwenelda,” I said. “How did you find me?”
“I…I went to your house and you weren’t there,” he said. “You’re shaking. Where’s your coat?”
I tipped my head toward Gwen.
“You’re going to get sick,” he said, shrugging out of his leather jacket and wrapping it around my shoulders.
The silk lining was so warm that I pulled it tighter around me and the leather crackled.
“What happened to her?” he asked, kneeling besides her.
“Faeries,” I said.
“What? Are you sure?”
“Only faes can inflict mortal wounds on hunters, right?”
“That’s how it used to be, but maybe—”
“Maybe she did it to herself? Is that what you were about to say?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Oh, come on.” I stepped away from him. “Look at the wound! No one does that to herself. The faeries were probably trying to get their magic back or maybe they were just trying to get rid of her. She doesn’t want me to call an ambulance, but I have no clue what to do.”
“Do you want her to live, Catori?” he asked, glancing up at me with those magnificent green eyes of his.
“Well, I don’t want her to die,” I said.
He turned his attention back to the prostrate body and peeled my coat off of her. Then he exposed her back and placed his hands on the wounds. As he mumbled words in that language I didn’t understand, his fingers began sparkling with gold flames. Slowly, magically, the large cuts mended, the torn pieces of skin reattaching themselves. She was still covered in blood, but there wasn’t even the hint of a scar. There were also no more tattoos.
“Is she…Did she die?” I asked, crouching down beside Cruz.
“She did. But her spirit wasn’t far.”
“Her spirit? You mean, you can resuscitate people?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you bring my mother back then?”
Cruz pulled down Gwen’s sweater, draped my coat over her still body, and then turned toward me. Tiny snowflakes drifted between us. They tangled in my long hair but evaporated when they touched Cruz. “She’d been gone too long. Her spirit was no longer next to her body.”
He unfurled his long body and stuck out his hand to help me up. I took it, even though I didn’t need his help.
“Thank you,” I said.
Many thoughts slipped in and out of my mind. From the intensity of his gaze, I could tell that his mind was crowded with contemplations of his own. Tentatively, he raised his free hand toward my cheek. He let it hover in the air, millimeters away from my skin. Even from that distance, I could feel the heat of his palm.
“What about Lily, Cruz?”
“What about Lily?”
“You say the marriage is arranged, that your relationship with Lily is fraternal, but that’s not the way she feels about you.”
He frowned. “I spend every day with her. Lily is my best friend. I can assure you that I’m not attracted to her in the way I’m attracted to you.”
“Which you really shouldn’t be.”
“Which I really shouldn’t be,” he repeated, softly cupping my cheek.
I should have insisted that we were all wrong for each other, but I simply didn’t want to. As intrepid, or perhaps as idiotic as a moth drawn to the sun, I tilted my face up toward Cruz.
He moved closer to me, which made my body temperature soar, a combination of the fire raging underneath his skin and the wild thumping of my heart. I waited—for what felt like an eternity but lasted only a second—for him to press his lips against mine. My mouth tingled, my nose, my ears, and slowly every inch of me wa
s consumed by Cruz’s fire. The heat was startling at first, but soon it became deliciously bearable, like basking in the sun on a gloriously hot day. He spread my fingers with his, all the while exploring my mouth with his tongue, alternating the pressure of his lips from hard to gentle, obliterating the memory of the kiss we’d shared in his car. I’m not sure if it was because he was magical that his embrace was too, but I was sure that I’d never been kissed like this before.
“Ahem.”
I spun away from Cruz so fast that I lost my balance. His arms shot out, circling my waist to hold me up. He didn’t let go when I’d regained my footing, which made Blake’s jaw flush.
I pushed his arm off, and took a step toward my friend, but he backed away.
“Why did you call me if you had him?” Blake asked, his voice vibrating with irritation.
“Cruz just got here. I didn’t know he was coming.”
Blake’s legs were planted wide and he held his chin up. “He’s engaged, Cat. I thought you were a better person.” He shook his head. “Your mother would’ve been so disappointed.”
Heat filled my eyes. “Don’t you dare bring Mom into this.”
Cruz’s chest pressed against my back and his hands wrapped around my upper arms. “Don’t let him get to you,” he murmured in my ear.
Blake’s good eye darkened. “If you have something to say to me, man up and say it!”
“What you just witnessed, buddy, is none of your business.”
“It’s your fiancée’s business. Maybe I should go inform her—”
“By all means, tell her. She won’t care,” Cruz said.
She would care.
“Is that really the sort of guy you want to be with, Cat?” Blake asked. “One with no morals, no respect.”
“You better stop talking now,” Cruz warned.
“Or what? You’re going to punch me?”
“Go ahead. Break some more bones in my face,” Blake said. “I’ve had so much worse.”
Cruz’s body warmed up, as though the fire had pooled into his skin. I jumped away from him, and stared at my sweater sleeves that had started smoking. I grabbed handfuls of snow and rubbed it against the smoke.
“I’m sorry,” Cruz said, when he realized what he’d done.
Blake’s brow furrowed. There was no more smoke but Cruz had burned a hole through one of the sleeves.
“It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s nothing.”
Cruz curled his fingers into tight fists.
“Did you just set fire to Cat?”
“He just squeezed my arms a bit hard,” I said, hoping Blake would swallow my lie.
“But I saw—”
Blake was interrupted by loud sputtering. Gwenelda writhed on the floor next to us, emerging from the snow. I crouched by her side and caught hold of her arm to ease her up.
She swiped her bloodied fingers against her back, then brought them in front of her face. “I no longer bleed. You healed me, Catori. Thank you.”
“It isn’t me you should be thanking. It’s Cruz. He’s the one who saved you.”
“Cruz?” She let her hand collapse against her waist as she took in the fae standing a few feet away from her. “You saved me? Isn’t that—”
He cut her off. “Who attacked you, Gwenelda?”
Her breathing was slow, grating. “The golwinim.”
“Golwinim?” I asked.
Cruz and Gwenelda held each other’s gazes for so long that Blake and I exchanged a look. As though remembering he was angry with me, Blake dropped my gaze.
“I’ll go find them,” Cruz said. “In the meantime, Catori and Blake will take you somewhere safe to rest.”
“Who are the golwinim?” I asked, but Cruz had started running. Or perhaps he’d started flying. I’d lost sight of him in the snowstorm.
“The guards,” Gwenelda said.
“What guards?” Blake asked.
“The Woods’s guards.” She dropped her voice. “The fireflies.” Over the blowing wind, I could barely make out her words.
“You call them fireflies?” Blake asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
The fireflies flitting through the graveyard last night weren’t insects; they were faeries.
CHAPTER 16 – FRIENDS AND FOES
Even though Gwenelda was healed, she limped when she walked, so Blake, being the gentleman that he was, picked her up and carried her to his navy Jeep. He set her down on the backseat.
“Thanks for letting us come to your place,” I said, glancing at his profile.
His lips stayed pressed together as he started the car and plowed fast through the snowy field.
“You’re driving too fast,” I said, watching the needle on the speedometer reach seventy. Most of Rowan was limited to forty-five miles an hour. “With the snow—”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he didn’t yell this, but his voice was loud and clipped.
I sucked in a breath. “I know you don’t approve, but don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Well, you’re acting like it.”
“I’m disappointed that you chose him.”
“Why? Because of Lily?”
He kept his eyes on the road beyond the windshield.
“It’s a strategic match, not a love—”
“Are you hearing yourself?” he shouted this time. “You’re making excuses for him, for yourself.”
“I’m not,” I mumbled, peering into the backseat. Gwenelda had her eyes closed as though she were sleeping. I hoped she was.
“Catori, the dude’s creepy. He passed himself off for a medical examiner, for God’s sake. Who does that?”
“It’s the guy’s wife who killed him,” I said, propagating a story which I knew was untrue, but it beat admitting that Cruz might have had a hand in the man’s death.
Blake slapped his steering wheel. “Bull crap!”
A tomblike silence invaded the car.
He had no right to be pissed at me. “I didn’t ask for your blessing or your opinion,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, but doing a shit job.
Blake sighed and it rumbled like the warm air blasting out of the car’s heater. “Are you trying to destroy the only part of me that wasn’t damaged in the blast?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he grumbled.
“No. Not nothing. What do you mean?”
“You really need me to spell it out?” he asked. His anger had deflated like the bouncy castle his mom had salvaged when we were kids. We’d jumped on that thing until the hole she’d duct-taped ripped further.
“Oh…Blake.”
“Don’t, Cat. Don’t pity me. Pity’s emasculating, and right now, I don’t need to feel like even less of a man.”
Although I wanted to reach out to touch his arm, I sat on my hands for the rest of the ride and watched the snowflakes drift down against the car window like the single tear that rolled out of Blake’s eye. He didn’t wipe it away. He was probably hoping I hadn’t noticed it.
When we parked in front of his one-story, flat-roofed house, which he’d bought with his disability severance pay, he got out of the car and unlocked his front door. Then he came back for Gwenelda who was apparently not pretending to be asleep.
I traipsed behind them into the dark house. He brought Gwen to his bedroom and closed his door, then he turned on the lights in the tiny living room and pulled a beer from his fridge.
“You want one?” he asked. He had his back to me. His shoulders strained the fabric of his sweater.
“Sure.”
He grabbed another bottle and flipped the cap off with his bare fingers, then handed it to me. “Why couldn’t we go to your place?”
“Because Dad thinks she’s a murderer,” I said. “He doesn’t know she’s related to us.”
“Is she family?”
“Sort of.”
“Is she a murderer?”
“She didn’t murder
the medical examiner. She hadn’t…arrived yet.”
Either Blake could read me too well, or my hesitation came through. “Did she murder anyone else?” he asked.
I raked my hands through my damp hair. “I don’t know.”
“So what do you know?” He took a swig of beer and sat in his dark-green armchair.
I plopped down on the couch facing him. “She is related to me, that I know for sure. I also know that she and the Woods hate each other.”
“Why?”
“Bad blood between them. She claims the Woods had a hand in the death of her friend.” I didn’t make the word plural, although it should have been.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he muttered.
A cell phone rang. I was so surprised by the interruption that it took me a few seconds to realize that the ringing was coming from my jeans. I swiped my finger against the screen when I read my father’s name.
“I have been worried sick. Where are you?” he shouted.
“I’m at Blake’s, Dad. Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Still, you could’ve texted me back. I sent you tons of messages! I left you a voicemail.”
“I never check those.”
“That’s not the point, Cat. You can’t do this to me. Not after…not after what happened.”
“I’m sorry. I’m going to come straight home.” But how would I get there? I couldn’t just take Blake’s car. If only I could fly. “Can you pick me up?”
“Yes,” he said, and it sounded as though all of his pent-up stress released in time with the word. “I’m leaving right now.” I could hear his heavy boots pound against the porch steps. “I’ll honk when I’m in front.”
When he disconnected, I stared at my phone’s screen until it went dark, then I lifted my gaze to my friend’s face. “I want you to forgive me, Blake,” I said. “I can’t leave here with you mad at me.”
His jaw tightened.
“Please.” I begged him with my eyes. I loved Blake, just not the way he loved me.
Rose Petal Graves (The Lost Clan Book 1) Page 10