She saw him watching. Something passed between them. I could see it, like breath frosted in cold air.
Singer, I said in my mind. Are you seeing this?
Yes, she said. Warn them.
Warn them. Yes. About what?
It didn’t matter that I didn’t know.
I gazed through the grackles’ eyes. The Singer’s consciousness melded with mine for an instant. Her voice traveled up my throat. Clawed its way into my mouth. Rolled off my tongue. Burst from the screeching mouths of the birds.
Kevin!
He looked our way—at the birds.
Amy, her eyes trained on Malek, took a step into the water. It covered her foot to the ankle. The next step, the water took her all the way to her waist.
Kevin whipped around. He saw. Lunged for her. Wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled. She shook him off. How? He should’ve been stronger.
He grabbed for her again. Pulled with his human muscles. Buffeted the air with his wings for leverage.
She slipped through his grasp.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I got this.”
“No!”
She stepped again. Went under the water. Blew a cascade of air bubbles along the surface.
Scott moved to wade in after her. Malek stepped in front of him.
Wait, he signed.
“What?” Scott shook his head. “Get out of the way.”
Malek didn’t budge.
Kevin shoved him. Hard. “Move, man. She’s in trouble.”
Malek lost his balance. Splashed into the shallowest water. Regained his footing. Stood guard.
Kevin grabbed him by the collar. “What did you do to her?”
Malek pushed him back. I gave her peace.
“Peace? She’s been ready to explode ever since you inked her.”
A lot longer than that.
“She could drown, man. Let me past.”
Malek shook his head. The water’s safe for her. It’ll take her emotions. Let them flow out. Defuse the ticking bomb.
“What bomb? What are you talking about?”
She’s hurting, Kevin. She wasn’t built for the world you live in. She wanted to be there because of you. If she hadn’t come to me, she’d have done something drastic.
“Like diving into the bayou?”
Malek nodded. She wouldn’t have come out.
Kevin took a step back. “What are you saying?”
She’s—was—suicidal.
“No. I would’ve seen it. I would know.”
She wouldn’t let you.
“You’re full of shit.”
Think what you want.
Think.
I thought back to the vision where I’d seen Malek and Amy together. How there were parts of the conversation I didn’t grok. How, hearing him talk to Kevin, I finally did.
I touched the Singer’s mind. Felt her agree to speak again through the birds.
Her voice rose on a wave. Blended with mine. “Kevin, it’s true.”
He didn’t look away from Malek, but he heard. The way his mouth pulled wide, the sudden anguish in his eyes, the catch of his breath.
“Why didn’t she say something?” he whispered.
Scott moved between Kevin and Malek. Took hold of Kev by the shoulders. “What’s going on? Tell me.”
Kevin pushed him out of the way.
She was protecting you, Malek signed.
“I never asked for that.”
It doesn’t matter. She’s not going to be able to stay with you. She needs the peace of the water, at least for now. She can bring you what you need, but she stays behind when you leave.
“No.”
It’s not up to you.
Kevin’s face contorted in anger. “You did this.”
No, Kevin. She did.
Behind Malek, the water in the center of the current rippled. Amy came up for air, her back to the group. She’d filled the jar with water—green and full of sediment and God only knew what else.
The set of her shoulders had relaxed. The ripple of muscles in her back startled me—and worse as soon as my eyes processed that not only had she lost her shirt and bra, but that I wasn’t looking at muscle under the skin. I was looking at fucking gills.
“Holy Jesus,” Scott said.
She’ll be all right.
Kevin shook his head.
It’ll be all right.
“No,” Kevin said. “It won’t.”
Amy scissor-kicked and turned, bringing the water back to shore. She came close enough that the swell of her breasts showed above the water. Close enough to see that the anxiety had washed from her face. She was serene. No other way to describe it.
She handed the jar off to Malek, who held his ground. He wouldn’t move for Kevin to slip past. He handed the jar to Scott and signed to Kev.
You want to talk to her, do it from there.
“I want it to be private.”
Not right now.
Because Kevin would try to talk her out of what she’d done. And when he couldn’t do that, he’d try to pull her out by force.
Kev wiped his eyes. “Amy, why?”
“I heard Malek tell you. Everything he said was right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me yourself? I would’ve listened.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I need this, Kevin. I can’t live without it—at least, not right now. I did the best I could. I didn’t leave you in the lurch. I got what you needed. You can make the water now. You can save the city. Put everything back to normal. Everything except me.”
Kevin knelt shakily in the tall reeds. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I would’ve changed things.”
“It’s not about you, Kevin. You need to know that. It’s about me. Who I am. What I need. And you couldn’t have changed a thing. You can’t change who you are.”
He shook his head.
“You should go now, Kevin.”
He looked up at the sky. “I can’t leave you.”
“You have to. You and Scott.”
Malek snapped his fingers.
Kevin met his gaze.
I’ll stay. I’ll watch over her. I promise I won’t leave her.
Kev didn’t move. It took Scott sliding his hands under Kevin’s arms and lifting him up. Scott leading him away. Scott hesitating at the sight of the black cloud of grackles in the trees.
“I know you’re watching,” he said, and not to the birds. “If there’s anything else you need us to know, spit it out now. He’s the one who can hear you and he’s about to lose his shit. You’ve got, like, ten seconds.”
The Singer and I spoke the address.
Kevin nodded.
Scott put him in the Explorer and drove away. I heard Kevin’s screams through the glass before I pulled the Singer and myself out of there.
I slammed back into my body. On the concrete. On the freeway. Leaning against the car. The Singer’s hands clasping mine.
My heart felt full to bursting. So much hurt. So much pain. I ached until the feeling leached from every inch of my body and every drop of my soul. Until I felt nothing but numb.
I opened my eyes. The Singer had opened hers, too. She held my gaze long enough for me to see the last of the fae spark leave them. And with the departure of the spark, her wings dissolved into shadows. The wind ripped them apart.
Shock shook me. I let go of her hands.
A single tear slid down her cheek.
Burns and Reid, Stacy and Beth watched in horror. Stace moved first. She hunkered down beside the Singer. Put her arm around the Singer’s shoulders. Held her tight.
She choked on my name. “Rude? Are you okay?”
I didn’t know what that word meant. “I’m—I don’t know what I am.”
“You look like you’re about to go off the deep end. Pull it back. Please. We need you.”
I struggled to make sense of what I felt. Of words that wanted to come out of my mout
h. “Kevin and Scott are on their way.”
“Amy? Malek?”
“The Singer can tell you.”
“She’ll be lucky if she’s not curled in the fetal position any second. Spill it.”
“No.” The Singer blinked rapidly. Gathered the tatters of herself together. “You go, Davies. We’ll be right behind you. I’ll fill them in.”
She was right. I had to go ahead.
All I had to do was close my eyes. I didn’t have to call on my seer’s intuition. There wasn’t much left of that anyway. The Destroyer in me saw just fine through the eyes of the grackles wheeling over Melody’s house. They heard, too.
Pleas for mercy. Unanswered.
The thunk of a blade into flesh and bone.
They smelled the spill of blood and understood that Melody had begun the summoning. She would bring as much of her father into this plane as she could before we arrived.
I felt what she felt. The inescapable draw of what she was. The demon inside. The way it overtook who she had been. Who she wished she could be.
If I didn’t get there in time, she’d sabotage everything we’d set out to do. Anything to keep her father on this plane. Anything to belong. Anything to be loved.
If.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I pulled into Melody’s driveway at high noon, according to my watch. Funny thing, the sun had started to sink into the horizon. It painted the sky orange and indigo and gold. I could make out the shadow of the moon, too, already high and full.
It had to be magic. Melody’s magic. What else could turn day into night?
I wished I hadn’t left the dog with the others. It would’ve been good to have him at my side. It would’ve helped me not to be so afraid of what I might do.
But that was just it: I couldn’t lean on anyone else. Not anymore. No one could choose for me. Not at this moment. This moment belonged to me.
The house of her nightmares looked like any other from the outside. Cookie-cutter one-story brick job with big, blind picture windows on either side of the entrance gate. Big dogs barked behind the wooden fence hung with a BEWARE. The grass had been fertilized recently. I wrinkled my nose at the chemical smell.
The grackles in the trees squawked at me. Stacy had said they were like crows and ravens. Carrion birds. They picked the dead into small pieces and carried their souls to the afterlife.
Stacy hadn’t said that. But I knew it all the same.
I expected to be struck by lightning. Or for Melody to come outside and throw everything she had at me. I kept thinking it would happen all the way up the pebbled walk. Or when I let myself in through the gate. The barking dog—a big chocolate Lab—whimpered, turned tail, and ran. Nothing to stop me from turning the knob on the unlocked door.
The stench struck me first. Blood. Guts. Burnt offering.
My sneakers squeaked on the tile floor as I followed my nose. Past the half bath and around the small atrium where Melody’s mom had planted lemon trees and ivy. Into the living room, where heavy antique furniture sat sentry and dust motes floated in the air. Down the hall where the walls were lined with family photos filled with smiling people with fearful eyes. The hall led past the master bedroom to the smaller one that once had belonged to Melody.
My feet sank into the plush blue carpet as soon as I stepped inside. The bed had been broken down, the frame turned wheels-up and stacked in pieces against the far wall, mattress upright beside it. The desk had been chopped into respectable firewood, the laptop that’d been on top of it thrown into a corner. Built-in bookshelves held a horde of teddy bears, from half-shredded to mint condition. They’d been Melody’s. Her mother had never thrown them out.
Melody had done a number in the middle of the room. She’d made a circle of her blood. Which I knew was hers because of the scent and the color and the light, even though she’d burned it until it blackened. Inside the circle, she’d laid out the body of her stepfather. Tied his wrists and ankles to metal tent stakes she’d driven through the floor with the hammer that lay by his head.
He had stepdad salt-and-pepper hair and a groomed mustache and beard. Manicured hands and a shiny wedding ring. He wore a red golf shirt, for chrissakes, and khakis. He didn’t have a single scuff on his white tennis shoes. Joe Suburbia, salary of at least one hundred thousand a year. Probably he volunteered for the homeowners association or the neighborhood watch. Had a lot of friends.
He had a dozen wounds that gaped like open mouths. His blood stained the carpet so thickly and deeply, it’d never come out.
He didn’t look like a monster. But he’d done what he’d done to Melody. That made him one.
He moaned.
Not dead. Not yet.
She knelt in the blood between his feet. Her hair stuck out in all different directions as if she’d pulled it like that. Tufts of it were strewn across the floor. Either her stepdad had yanked it out while he fought for his life, or she had.
His blood soaked the front of her overalls. Streaked the skin of her shoulders and arms. She’d wiped her face with the washcloth clutched in her hands. It would never be white again. No amount of bleach would do the trick.
I should’ve felt something more than I did, but I didn’t have it in me anymore.
Destroyer.
Maybe. Maybe finally here. Could be I was finally gone. All the way over.
“Hey,” Melody said. She didn’t look at me. She kept her gaze locked on her enemy.
I took small steps toward her. Tried to find someplace close to sit without landing in a soaked mat of red, but couldn’t. I gave up and settled down anyway.
“Been busy,” I said.
She snorted. “Blood of the guilty.”
“I see that.”
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “I was all by myself. I was starting not to be able to stand it.”
I nodded. “You already said the summoning?”
“You know I did. You can tell. Your demon is in charge now.”
It should scare me to death. I ought to ball my hands into fists and cry. Or stand up and punch the walls until I broke all the bones in my hand. “Yeah, I think he is.”
“Will you help me, then?” she asked.
“I was gonna help you anyway, remember? We have to finish the spell to defeat your father.”
She glanced at me from beneath her lashes. A small smile curved her lips. “Are the others coming?”
“You know they are.”
“But we have a little time before they get here. Plus a few minutes before, you know, he does.” She curled her toes under and lifted up. Pushed toward me until her knees touched mine before she knelt again.
“I could give you a lecture about how what you’re doing is wrong,” I said.
“Won’t help. Besides, you don’t feel it, do you?”
“On some level,” I said. No lie.
“But not close to your heart.”
“I’m not sure I have one anymore.”
She nodded. “Yes, you do. It’s just battered. Broken. Like mine.”
Broken. “Everything’s falling apart. The people I love are hurting. I can’t fix it for them. The only thing I can do is finish what you started.”
“You won’t want to. Your intentions are still honorable, Rude Davies. But when you meet my father, you won’t follow through. Your demon won’t let you.”
Her words hit me like knives. Left me bleeding on the inside. I closed my eyes. Followed the last thread of my intuition into the future she wanted.
The circle on the floor would burst into flame again all by itself—the power of her father could do that. He was like me, what I’d become, only a lot more subtle. He’d show, and every syllable out of his mouth would drip with venom that worked slowly. Wormed its way inside and turned a person into a negative of himself. No heart. No soul.
Maybe that’s how Melody’s mother fell for him. He told her the kinds of truths that poisoned. How beautiful she was, but not beautiful enough. How smart she wa
s, but not smart enough to walk in the world without him. Maybe she hated herself for buying his bullshit. Hated Melody because she came from him.
I knew it was true.
I also saw that Melody’s mother had problems that went way beyond what the Demon had done to her. That to her, love meant pain. How could she not be screwed up? How could she not teach that to Melody? No wonder Melody didn’t know anything else. No wonder she didn’t understand what love was.
The only thing she had to hang onto was hope.
Her father would destroy that, too.
I got it. I even felt the lure. No more hurt. No more trying to do the right thing only to have it bite you in the ass. If you felt anything at all, lash out. Punish the ones responsible. Make it as if they’d never existed at all.
“What do you want to do now, Melody?”
She leaned forward until we were almost nose to nose. “I meant what I told you before, about how I made a huge mistake doing this. I couldn’t make myself stop. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Her breath was warm on my cheek.
“You’re the only one who does.”
For sure, none of my friends did. “Desperate people do desperate things.”
She touched her mouth to mine. Gentle at first. Slow. Her lips moved across mine like velvet. She tasted of amber and blood and God help me, I wanted that. I wanted her.
I framed her face with my hands. Deepened the kiss. Slid my tongue into her mouth to taste her more fully. The hope she held. The dreams that’d been smashed. The demon in her that could never be sated. She wanted what she couldn’t have. She wanted me by her side.
She combed her fingers through my hair. Down my back. Underneath my shirt with increasing. Pressure. Heat.
One beat of my heart. All it would take to draw her down with me. To slip off her clothes and bury myself inside her. Everything I’d held onto, gone in a flash.
I saw how it would be. Warm and slick and urgent. And over as quickly as it started.
If I did that, I’d hurt her. If I did that, I’d lose myself.
I thought about Kevin and Amy. What I’d witnessed by the bayou. Scott’s confusion. The way he always instinctively knew what to do anyway.
Stacy. How she did everything outside the box. How much she cared.
The Singer. Her strength. Her resolve. She acted from the heart even when hers had been shredded by her own choices. By Kevin’s.
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