“I can’t stop her.” He massaged his swollen eyes with his fingertips. “No one can. She’s a Fury. She won’t be sane again until her thirst for vengeance is sated.”
“She’s going to kill me and the mermaid. Do you want our deaths on your conscience?” I waited for a flicker of pity, something. I got nothing. He was empty. Drained. Furies burned out everyone around them, and this guy was crispy. “I’m an agent with the Earthen Conclave. When this is over, you’re going to prison for a very long time.”
His lips parted and then closed. When he exited the room, steps that had trudged earlier seemed lighter somehow.
I followed without him prompting me, closing the gap between us with long strides that made my calves burn. All the while his shadow breathed ice on my nape. One step closer. Two. By the third I could have reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. I lunged, smashing against an invisible barrier that rattled my brain, and I slid to the floor in a daze.
A witch. The man was a witch. I hadn’t touched him, but I read his magic easily.
The man didn’t break stride as he motioned to the umbra. Eager to please its master, the shadow consumed me. The now familiar chittering noises announced the arrival of the igel. A sea of tiny bodies made for an undulating carpet of spines, and the shadow laid me to rest on top of them. I hissed through my teeth as their needles pierced the sensitive flesh on my skull, back, hips and calves. Once skewered properly, I bit back a whimper as hundreds of dainty feet scrabbled across the grimy linoleum, causing the spines to shift—and my skin to tear—with them.
Somehow the little beasts scuttled up the stairs and out of the house while supporting my weight. Night had fallen during my captivity. From my new position, inches from the ground and flat on my back, the sky hung infinite and solemn above me.
Gemini derived their name from the Zodiac. The story goes that Castor and Pollux were twin brothers known as the Dioskouri. Castor was the son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, and a mortal. Pollux was the son of Zeus, and a demigod. Their mother was Leda. To make a Greek tragedy short, Castor was killed. In his grief, Pollux asked that his father allow him to share his immortality with his twin so they could remain together. Zeus agreed, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini.
That said, I couldn’t point out our namesake constellation if my life depended on it.
Bright stars glittered above me, and they were nameless and heartless as they watched my progress.
Locked in the shadow’s chill embrace, I conserved my energy and strained my ears for hints about what came next. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to hear cheering and whistling coming from behind me, in the direction the hedgies were hustling.
The noise grew deafening as we pierced a ring of light that washed yellow and warm over my eyes. Smoke stung my nostrils. A waft of burnt citronella made my eyes sting. Toenails clicked on a smooth surface, and the convoy ground to a halt. The gully, it turned out, was a deep wash behind a sprawling clapboard house. The igel mucked through a bed of smoothed clay the pale gray of Unseelie skin. Faces ringed the crumbling ledges above, peering down at me. Money exchanged hands. Popcorn—seriously?—rained over my head. The firelight illuminated the area where I was being held but left the spectators their anonymity. Still, I had a good guess as to who they were.
Furies were rare. At least as rare as Geminis. They were usually born into witch families, making them one of the few fae who sprung from humans. Except not really. A Fury’s soul was immortal. Its flesh was temporary housing. What that meant in most cases was a Fury latched on to a human early in its life, kicked its soul to the curb and became the person. It would live that life, procreating like mad, until its body grew old and died, and then it would leap into the next suitable vessel in its lineage and begin again.
So if I had to guess who—other than Jasper’s igel family—would be so eager to watch the show, I would place my bets on Letitia’s coven, of which her mother and brother must also be members.
Footsteps padded toward me. An old woman, who I recognized as the final member of the trio who’d confronted Harlow in Wink, leaned over me, tight-lipped and indifferent. She pointed a gnarled finger to the left, and the shadow wrenched my neck so I had to look or my head would pop off.
Harlow hung suspended by the second umbra. Her feet were bare and her legs smooth. The tail was gone again. Microscopic denim shorts rode low on her hips. A swath of pale skin glowed warm in the torchlight between the waistband and the hem of her neoprene top.
“Release me.” Though my head was still cranked to one side, I cut my eyes to their corners to glare up at the old woman. “She’s made no secret she plans to kill us. The only way we all walk away from this is if you release me and the mermaid. Now.”
Her puckered lips plumped as she considered my demand. “I will no’ cross that girl, child, lest I surrender me own life in place of yours.” She bared bright pink gums. “I’m old, but I’m no’ dead yet.”
“Gazing through the bars of a prison cell is not how I would choose to end my life,” I threatened.
She leaned over, nudging me with her toe, and a pentacle necklace slid from the deep collar of her blouse. “Who do ye think ye are to threaten me?”
Playing off a hunch, I spelled it out for her. “I’m an agent with the Earthen Conclave. I’ve been to the Crathie Prison, where all the convicted earth witches are sent to die, and I can tell you it’s a special kind of hell tailored to the needs of its prisoners.” She fisted the pentacle for strength, and I knew I had her. Magic was passed down the maternal lines. The man was a witch, and so she must be too. “You will never again feel rain on your skin, dirt in your hands or nurse tender shoots to maturity. Your connection with the earth will be severed, and you will die surrounded by concrete and steel.”
Pursed lips moved in a circular motion. “I want immunity for meself and me boy. Goddess knows he has suffered enough.”
I jumped at the sound of her voice. I hadn’t expected to hear it inside my head. The privacy was welcome, though. “Give me a hand—” and I meant that literally, “—and I promise you and your son full immunity.”
“Shadow and light canno’ exist in ta same place at ta same time.”
“Wait.” I writhed. “That can’t be it. What does it mean?”
“Figure it out.” She thumped my temple with her knuckle. “I canno’ do all the work for ye.”
A riddle. Great. They might as well shoot me now.
After giving me a decisive nod, she toddled out of my line of sight. Only then did I notice despite the firelight, she cast no shadow. Letitia had enslaved hers too. I could guess where it had gone. It must be the one confining Harlow. I wondered which had dragged Graeson into the lake, but remembering his ear-piercing howls made my chest hurt, so I focused on what the old woman said, hoping that scrap of insight might save Harlow and me.
“Bring her,” Letitia keened in a high voice that shattered my train of thought. “Let all witness justice for my Jasper.”
The shadow hefted me upright, and my head spun as the blood rushed back to my brain. “Oh fudge.”
A beer bottle thudded beside my foot, and a booming voice yelled, “Are we doing this or what?”
Apparently the natives were getting restless.
Letitia gestured me forward, and I had no choice about going. The nearer I came to her, the hotter my skin burned, the harder my gut twisted. Her black gaze pierced the depths of my soul and ignited the petty, squabbling tangle of faded emotional baggage we all carry until each of those old hurts smoldered with renewed fervor.
She leaned in, and her lips brushed my cheek. Rage boiled in the kiss, and it scalded my mind until the wisps of my thoughts evaporated. There was nothing. I was nothing. All that remained was Letitia. Her will. Her power. I understood now. I understood everything.
The mermaid had to die.
She pointed a finger at a woman with delicate features and pastel hair. She had slender legs, not fins,
but Letitia was insistent. “Kill her. Kill the mermaid.”
I didn’t think. I didn’t question. I ran at the slumped figure. A shadow kept pace with me, its insidious whispers stoking the ravenous fire smoldering within me. Fingers curled into claws, I swiped at the woman’s face with my blunt fingernails. She brought her arm up and blocked me, our elbows tangling, and that rush of contact sent a haze of cool magic flowing up my arm.
Gentle energy crackled over my skin, and the Fury’s blinding haze cleared. Harlow. Fresh horror seized my heart as her magical signature registered.
There was none.
Harlow was…human.
“Run,” I rasped.
“I can’t.” An umbra pooled around her ankles, cementing her to the spot. “It’s all right, Cam.”
No. This was all kinds of not right. The contact magic was fading, and my memories dulled with it.
Who was this girl? Why had I attacked her? What about her made me so angry?
“What is this?” Letitia shrieked. “I told you to kill her.”
Each stomp of her foot as she approached ground my awareness under her heel. Fighting the compulsion left me trembling and weak with sweat pouring down my forehead into my eyes.
“Tell my folks I would have come home. Can you do that for me?” Harlow’s voice trembled. “Tell them I would have chosen the Mother.”
The Mother. She meant the ocean. She would have returned home to her pod at the end of her year. What kind of human claimed merfolk as kin? What sort of mortal called the sea home? If Letitia had her way, I would never learn the truth of the peculiar little un-mermaid.
I captured her hand between my damp ones. “Please.”
Unsure which of us I was begging, I squeezed her fist in a silent urge to run far and fast away from me. The harder I gripped her, the better it felt until Letitia radiated from the corner of my eye, and I clenched my hand until Harlow’s knuckles broke.
The girl—Harlow?—cried out.
“Kill her,” Letitia snarled, inches from my face.
The track of my mind skipped and white noise filled my head as Letitia’s fury seeped into my soul. That searing emotion became mine, and it was righteous. The mermaid was of no consequence. She was an obstacle to quenching my desire for vengeance.
Sweet anger flowed through my veins. I punched the girl in the solar plexus, and she shot backward like one of those hinged targets at the baseball toss booth at a carnival. She skidded across the clay, knees bent, and I climbed on her before she could sit upright. I hit her again. Her jaw popped. Again. Her head jerked to one side. Again. Blood cascaded from her nose over her lips.
“Idiot child.”
I swatted my ear.
“Take my advice or you will take her life.”
The nagging voice kept buzzing.
“Shadow and light canno’ exist in ta same place at ta same time.”
I clamped my hands over my ears.
Shadow and light. Shadow and light. Shadow and light.
The echo was maddening.
An image flickered in my mind’s eye, a card drawn from the deck of my memories by the presence somehow rooted in my head. Two identical girls. Holding hands. Plush rabbits tucked under their arms. Matching dresses. Hair ribbons fluttered behind them.
One corner of the image caught fire. Flames engulfed one girl. Lori. My twin. My shadow.
“Perhaps you’re no’ a waste of oxygen after all.”
The pressure in my skull vanished. The voice did too.
The moment of clarity was brutal. Harlow lay ruined and unconscious between my thighs.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” the Fury seethed. “You aren’t finished yet.”
Yes, I was.
Lori was never more than a thought away. Not really. No matter how hard I tried to forget the gulf of loss her name inspired. Becoming her such a short time ago only strengthened my bond to her form. I inhaled as Camille and exhaled as Lori.
Harlow’s blood stained the hem of my nightgown. I scrambled off her and hid my face behind my hands. I let sobs crash through me, allowed my shoulders to shake with fear I didn’t have to fake.
A dull thud sounded beside me.
“The hell, Tia?” a man’s voice boomed. “What is she? A kid? You didn’t say nothing about hurting no kid.”
I peeked through my small fingers at him. The man had jumped into the basin to save me—or at least to determine if I deserved saving.
Choking out a cry, I ran to him and wrapped my arms around his legs. He patted my head while glaring down Letitia, who appeared torn too. She didn’t want to hurt a kid, mothers were hardwired that way, and right about now she was thinking of her own rugrats. Even the shadow assigned to me faltered. That hesitation was all I needed.
The man wore jeans smeared with oil and smelling of diesel fuel. I reached up as if to take his hand, fingernail loosening, and pricked him with my spur. His blood sent faint tingles through my palm. Witch.
The man yelped and slung his hand in the air. “I think she bit me.”
“No.” Letitia pressed her fingers to her lips. “I saw her. She…”
A wealth of information streamed behind my eyes, years of this man’s knowledge now written on the backs of my lids. A lifetime of magical theory swelled my brain, and the hairs lifted down my arms as I claimed his talents as my own.
Letitia was the first to read the situation. “Get down.”
I flung a hand in her direction, a hex rising to my lips. She fell screaming and writhing. The man beside me I touched gently, and he sank to his knees in submission. The cheering and shouting I had gone deaf to vanished, leaving a void ringing in my ears.
“Who else?” I challenged.
The umbras hurled themselves at me. Mentally flipping through my options, I hit on a spell to banish darkness and yelled it as the shadows’ murky forms descended on me. An orb of light ignited in my palm. Shocked by its sudden appearance, I hurled it at them before my skin blackened from the heat. Their maws opened in silent screams. Air displaced, and the night depressurized around me. The creatures were gone. When I glanced up, the nosebleed section stood empty. Footsteps and panicked shouts trailed after the cowards.
“Run,” I slurred at them, wobbling on unsteady feet. So much knowledge crammed into a brain not hardwired for casting spellwork was fracturing my gray matter. My knees kept buckling. I was going down if I didn’t get moving.
A fierce howl sent screams tearing through the night, and my heart flipped.
Graeson?
The stream of spellwork flickered and began fading from memory. Every step toward Harlow might as well have been a mile. Legs heavy, I forced my feet forward until I was in touching distance of her swollen cheek. Her secret was laid bare to me now. There was more to her story—there had to be—but for now she was a mortal with life-threatening injuries the witchy man knew how to cure. That I knew how to cure, for a few seconds more.
Cupping her battered face in my palms, I blew healing Words over her face. The exhale drained me. My lungs fought when I tried to refill them. The world tilted, and my head hit the ground. I was stretched out beside Harlow when her eyes opened, and I had a bird’s-eye view while her torn flesh mended.
A heavy thud sprayed dirt over my face. The tiny grains of sand stung my eyes, so I shut them. A rough, wet tongue swept across my lashes. I pretended not to smell the coppery tang on the wolf’s breath as he nudged me under the jaw with his cold nose. He wanted my eyes to open. I wanted them open too, but they were so heavy. The magic was gone. I was spent. I had nothing left.
A harsh grunt. A low groan. A voice strained by change managed, “Ellis?”
“Lori,” I whispered, still trapped in her form.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart.” Fingers trembling from the rapid shift, he clasped hands with me. “Rest. You’re safe. I’m not going anywhere.”
I’m pretty sure I told him I’m not your sweetheart before my consciousness slipped, because his rus
ty chuckles were the last thing I heard.
Chapter 11
Dreams didn’t usually jar my teeth. The world dipped, and my head banged a hard surface. Light streamed through tinted windows and spilled over my face. The dull jab of a headache set up camp between my eyes. Ouch. I ground my palm into my forehead, gripped the back of a leather seat and leveraged myself upright.
“Where am I?” The question came out of me on a groan.
“An hour outside of Abbeville, Mississippi,” a familiar voice replied on my right.
“Graeson?” I squinted at the blurry outline occupying the passenger seat.
“Call him Cord.” The pale blue eyes of the driver flashed up to mine in the rearview mirror. Strawberry blonde hair sun-bleached with softer highlights. Flawless skin without a hint of makeup. An artful smattering of freckles that could have been hand-drawn for their symmetry. “Graeson makes him sound uptight.”
The uptight warg in question grunted. “Ellis, this is Dell Preston.”
“Short for Adele.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “And hi, freaky shifter person.”
Irritated prickles swept over my skin, and my fingers dug into the headrest. Too bad it wasn’t Graeson’s skull. “Freaky shifter person?”
“Dell,” he growled.
“What?” Her forehead crinkled. “I’m a warg. You’re a warg. It’s not like shifter is a derogatory term.”
“The freaky part is probably what she’s taking exception to,” he said dryly.
“Oh.” Dell’s lips pursed as she studied me instead of, oh, I don’t know, the road. “Hi, totally unfreaky shifter person.”
“It’s fine.” The opinion of a random warg didn’t matter one way or the other to me. “Where’s Harlow?”
“She’s on bedrest for the next twenty-four hours.” He twisted around in his seat. “The magic you used healed her. You saved her life, Ellis.”
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