It was a solid plan, and purpose washed away the lethargy infusing my limbs. Bane would have expected us to carry on and get this shit sorted, and I knew just how to do it. The clock told me it was six in the morning.
I gently shook Ryker’s shoulder. “It’s time to wake up, babe. It’s time to summon the Piper.”
Chapter 9
After a quick breakfast consisting mainly of coffee, the guys and I split up to take care of various tasks. Ryker had taken on the responsibility of updating the Black Wings in the east wing about Lucifer’s return—another fail in the whole keeping them in the loop thing. Orin had excused himself to speak with Cassie—a fail on my part for not kicking him when she’d come looking for him. Guilt was a shroud that was becoming all too familiar; it sat snug on my shoulders as I was headed to the west wing to update Marika on what Ambrosius had told me.
Marika opened her door clutching a book. She looked taller. I glanced down, and the reason why stared back at me in the form of bright red stilettos. She followed my gaze down to her feet and then laughed.
“Thought I’d break them in for after all this is over. I am so going dancing.” She kicked them off and ushered me in.
She wasn’t alone. A guy lounged on the bed with another book and two females sat opposite each other in high-backed chairs by the window. They were all reading or making notes, their faces drawn and pale. Huge mugs of steaming coffee sat on the window sill, probably to combat their obvious fatigue. Shit, they must be feeling the effects of the ghouls. How many were in the room with us now?
Marika yawned.
Had she slept at all? Not that it would help if she was being fed off. “It’s barely eight in the morning. Did you get some sleep?”
“Yeah, we just hit the books again about an hour ago. Wanted to get to it and find a solution. I guess you want an update on the shadow stripping thing?” Marika held up her book. “We managed to grab the books we needed, but so far, no joy.” She held up a finger. “But I have hope.”
I winced. “I don’t.”
Her brows shot up, and I filled her in on what Ambrosius had told me.
“Damn.” She shut her book with a snap. “Guys, cool it. We have confirmation that it can’t be done. Humans can’t be stripped of shadows.”
A series of groans filled the room.
“But nephs can,” Ambrosius said.
I started, hand going to my chest. “Dammit, Ambrosius. Some warning, please.”
“I thought you could see me.”
“I don’t wander around in aether-sight. It gives me a headache.”
“Sorry.” He sounded contrite and my irritation melted. “I will announce my presence in the future.”
“Thanks.”
Marika was silent, her mouth parted in awe. “Ambrosius? Merlin’s soul-piece, Ambrosius?”
“I like to think of myself as an independent entity,” Ambrosius said stiffly.
Marika bit back a smile. “I’m sorry. It’s just, Order of Merlin and all that.”
“Yes. Merlin-bloods.” There was a smile in his voice.
“Wait? What?” Marika scanned the air.
“You all have his blood in your veins,” Ambrosius replied. “Did you not know this?”
“Um, no.” Behind her, the other Order members sat up straighter, intrigued.
“All arcane manipulators can be traced back to Merlin. He was a … prolific procreator, and being cambion meant his appetites were voracious.”
This was so weird. He was talking about himself and yet not.
“I can sense his power in this room,” he continued. “In all of you. Asher knows this, of course. It is why he used the Order to help the shades break free. But you … you are different.”
“Who?” Marika glanced about.
“You. Marika. That is your name, isn’t it?”
Marika looked at me. “How am I different?”
I shrugged, and there was a long beat of silence.
“I do not know,” Ambrosius said finally.
Marika clapped her hands together. “Okay, well, then let’s not stress about it, shall we. We need to get back to work on the shadow problem. Find a solution for the nephs.”
“The solution is standing in front of you,” Ambrosius said. “Serenity’s dagger can make the cut for the nephs and sever them from their shadows.”
Marika threw up her hands. “Now where the heck were you a day ago?” She shook her head. “All this bloody reading for nothing,” she muttered.
I tucked in my chin. She didn’t know about Lilith’s arrival, or Bane or Lucifer. It was stuff they needed to know, but the words were like ashes on my tongue. As if picking up on my thoughts, Ambrosius began to speak. He told them about his trip, about Lilith and Bane and what he really was. When he was done, the room was filled with an awkward silence.
Marika was the first to break it. “I’m sorry about Bane, Harker. He was a great guy, a little abrasive but cool.”
Something twisted in my chest, stealing my breath. For a moment, my hard-woman facade cracked and my emotions rose to the surface. I grabbed at them, pushing them back down.
Marika cleared her throat. “Well. It seems we have a plan, then. We use the daggers to liberate the nephs and cut off the shades’ supply of neph hosts. But we still need to do something about the humans.”
“I have a plan for that. Ambrosius suggested finding hallowed ground. Somewhere where the shades may not be able to roam? Maybe we can ward another building?”
“No.” Marika shook her head. “The spell that is holding the wards up channels arcane power through us. We’ve been struggling to maintain them as it is.”
“What about Respite?” the guy on the bed said.
Marika’s brows shot up, and she pursed her lips. “Possibly.”
“The cemetery? How can that help us?”
“It may not,” Marika said. “But rumor has it that the area is supernaturally guarded by the souls that live there. Maybe it could be a safe zone? We won’t know until we ask.”
Another thought occurred to me. What if the ghouls couldn’t get into Respite either? Doris would know. “Leave it with me. I’ll speak to the soul who kinda runs the place. If this works, then we can move the fatigued humans at the hospital first. They’re being fed on psychically by ghouls. It’s weakening them and making them easy prey for shades.”
Marika’s eyes widened and she looked around the room at her exhausted posse. “The ghouls are feeding off humans?”
I winced. “Yeah. Sorry, did I not mention that?” Man, my brain was fried.
She licked her lips nervously. “Are there any here now?”
I switched to aether-sight and scanned the room, then delved deeper. Ambrosius appeared by my side and then something flickered in the periphery of my vision—a blue, wispy, partial figure floating above the guy on the bed. The guy yawned as if on cue.
“One.”
She rubbed her temples. “I guess the wards around this place must be deterring the shades, otherwise we’d all be goners. It also explains why maintaining the wards has been so hard. With the ghouls draining us psychically, there is no way we’d be able to maintain another set of wards. We need to do something more, though, because I’m not hiding behind these walls in fear of becoming infected, and I’m not hiding out in the cemetery either. We need to get rid of the ghouls.”
I smiled mirthlessly. “And we will. We just need to summon death.”
She blinked in surprise but didn’t question me. “Just tell us what you need us to do.”
***
Leaving Ambrosius with Marika, I went in search of Oleander. He was probably in the kitchen; it was supper time, and he’d made it his prime objective to feed everyone, but his skills would be better served helping Marika with our Piper summoning. If Marika couldn’t find anything in her books, then we’d have to check out our library, and then the Black Wings’ library at the mansion. Abigor or Abbadon could fly the ancient over to the cliff house
to go through their tomes if need be. The more eyes and brains on the problem, the more likely we were to solve it.
I rounded the corner leading to the steps down to the kitchen and stopped short at the sight of Cassie. She froze for a fraction of a second and a series of emotions flitted across her face—surprise, anger, and… Was that resignation?
“I was actually coming to find you,” she said.
My stomach clenched. “If this is about Orin being in my room last night, then I’m sorry. He shouldn’t have been there. I was upset. I wasn’t thinking. I should have made him leave.” But I hadn’t wanted to, and guilt was a real, writhing thing in my chest. There was no excuse. None. And she had every reason to be pissed at me.
She closed her eyes briefly, her smile tight. “It’s not up to you to make him do anything, Harker. That’s the whole fucking point.” She shook her head. “I was coming to tell you that I’m done. Orin and I are done. It’s not working, it hasn’t been for some time, but I thought when I came back that things could be different, but I see I was too late.” She paused a moment as if gathering the words. “While I was gone, he fell in love with you.”
The words were like a punch to my chest. My ears heated and my eyes grew hot. “It’s not like that. We’re friends. He cares about me.”
My words were hollow to my ears because deep down I didn’t believe them. It was hard to make excuses when someone was so blunt with the truth. It was difficult to hide from what you were picking up on when someone threw it in your face.
“You know it, Harker. You’ve just been running from it, and I appreciate that. I do. But I’m not the kind of chick that holds onto someone that would rather be elsewhere. It won’t make him love me again.”
“Orin chose you. He chose to be with you.”
She flinched. “Yeah? But he was with you last night.” She sighed. “I get it. He feels bad for what I went through, and he wants to be the good guy by sticking it out and picking up the pieces. And I thought it would be enough, that with a little time, together we’d get back to the place we’d been.” She shrugged. “But I deserve better. I deserve loyalty.”
Whoa, wait a minute. “You’re the one who went off with Killion all the time, even before you were infected with the shade. So, if anything, it’s Orin who deserves better.”
Her mouth twisted. “And the truth comes out. I knew the softly, softly nice approach was an act. And FYI, we were in an open relationship.”
“Open for you. But Orin wasn’t fucking anyone else.”
Her mouth pursed like she’d sucked on a lemon. “No, he wasn’t. But he is now, maybe not actually fucking, but wishing he could. Sleeping in the same bed, holding you, all that crap, it’s cheating just the same as if he stuck his cock in you.”
My face burned because she was right. There was no excuse, and I’d allowed him to be close to me knowing he was back with her.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have put more of a distance between us. I should have made him leave last night.”
She blew out a sharp breath. “Fuck it. As much as it would feel good to push all the blame onto you, I can’t. He tried to tell me. He tried a couple of times, and I shut him down. I brought up my trauma and used guilt to force him to keep his mouth shut. I knew he’d stay, that he’d sacrifice what he really wanted. But it doesn’t feel good. Not anymore. I can’t do it anymore, and so it’s over.”
“For what it’s worth, he really did love you. You have no idea what it did to him when you went off with Killion.”
Her eyes hardened to ice chips. “And what do you think it will do to him to see you with Rivers or Ryker? You think he’ll be able to handle being one of many?” Her lip curled. “If he couldn’t cope with me seeing Killion, then how the heck do you think he’ll cope with you ‘snuggling’ with Ryker or fucking Rivers.”
It was like she’d punched me in the gut. “Rivers and I haven’t—”
“Not yet, but you will. I see the way he looks at you. That icy intensity he reserves for his tech projects. Things he wants to take apart and put back together again. He has impeccable control but it’s not infinite, and he’s always close to losing it around you.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “I wonder what it will be like to fuck the ice king?”
Rivers’s hands on my skin, his mouth crushing mine as he ground me into the wall. If there was ice there, then it had been on fire. Shit. I averted my gaze.
“Orin won’t be able to cope.” The edge had dropped from her tone. “He’ll try to be the man you need. He’ll try to share you, but each time you’re with one of the others, you’ll take a piece of him.”
Was she right? Is that what being with me would do to him? Orin. Sweet, kind Orin. The thought of hurting him, of bringing him any kind of pain, made my insides twist.
“Up until now, Orin and I have been friends, but … if he wants to be more, then I won’t turn him away.”
Bane’s words echoed in my ear. Promise me you’ll accept who and what you are. Promise me you will let them love you. I’d been afraid at first. Afraid to let my guard down and feel, but the guys each reached out to me in different ways. I found a new piece of myself with each of them, and together they made me feel safe enough to accept myself and finally be whole.
I met Cassie’s gaze steadily. “I’m a cambion, and when we love, we love with every fiber of our being, and I love the guys. I love them, and if they want me, then I’m not going to turn my back on what we could have.”
Finally, my daimon sighed. The knot in my stomach, the one that had been there forever, or so it seemed, loosened.
Cassie gave me a hard smile. “You think it’s going to be easy. You think your pretty face and body will be enough for them? They may be nephs, but they’re still guys, and one thing I’ve learned about guys is that all they want is to be the alpha, and when it comes to women, they all want to possess her. So, yeah. Good luck with that.” Cassie took a deep breath and exhaled. “Okay. Now we have that out of the way. What’s the plan? Orin said you’d taken over the reins. What can I do to help?”
She was done, but she was wrong. However, there was no point arguing with her when she was hurting. There was no point arguing full stop. There was too much at stake to worry about love right now. I’d made Bane a promise—to be okay—and I would. But first I needed to make sure the MPD made good on our vow to protect the humans of this district, and Cassie was a fucking awesome MPD officer. We needed her, and from the looks of it, she was ready to put personal crap on hold to be there.
I nodded curtly. “Walk with me, and I’ll fill you in.”
***
Oleander had been safely dispatched to help Marika, the Black Wings were on standby to take him to the cliff house if needed, and Ava and Cassie were waiting on my call once I had confirmation that Respite was hallowed. Rivers was still with Bane, and Ryker had said he’d drive me, but it had been Orin who’d climbed into the driver’s seat of the van. He hadn’t spoken, just started the engine and hit the gas.
We were on the main road before I broke the silence. “Where’s Ryker?”
“I told him I’d drive you,” Orin said.
“Why?”
He was tight-lipped and silent for a long beat. “What did Cassie say to you?”
God, what hadn’t she said? “Just that you guys weren’t together anymore.”
“And?”
I threw up my hands. “Does it matter? She was upset. She said some things. I said some things. It’s over.”
“Did she tell you why it’s over?”
Oh … He wanted to know if I knew how he felt. My neck heated. “She said you were in love with me.”
The van swerved to the curb, and he hit the brakes. He sat there, chest heaving, hands gripping the wheel so tight I thought he would take the whole thing off.
“Orin?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I lied to you when I said you and I were just friends. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He felt g
uilty? He had no idea. A choked laugh escaped my lips, and he turned his head to look at me, his beautiful face knitted in a frown.
“You think this is funny?” he asked softly, almost as if he couldn’t believe it.
“No, not funny, just … ironic. If anyone has anything to feel guilty about, it’s me. I lied when I said I wanted things to work with you and Cassie. I lied when I told myself you should be with her and not me. And even though I knew it was wrong, I thought about you anyway, in ways that a friend shouldn’t.” I swallowed hard. “I thought about you touching me … kissing me … wanting me.”
His breath exploded from his lips. “You want me?”
His face, the incredulous fucking look on his face. Did he have no clue? I needed to make him understand, but simple words wouldn’t do. Now that Cassie and he were officially over and the guilty tangle inside me was gone, it seemed natural to unbuckle my seat belt and climb over to straddle him.
His hands settled lightly on my hips, almost as if he was afraid that if he touched me too firmly I’d shatter.
I cupped his face and looked into his eyes. “I want you, Orin. Not just with my body, but with my heart too.” I kissed his forehead softly and then his eyelids. “Nothing chases away the nightmares like your arms around me. Nothing makes me feel more at home than the smell of your fucking scones. You make me feel safe. You make me feel like I’ve come home.” I kissed him feather-light, just a brush of my lips, because if I kissed him, really kissed him right now, then I’d be lost.
His fingers tightened a fraction on my hips, sending a lance of yearning through me. There was no longer any hunger, not anymore. But I felt it anyway. It was a hunger for him, a desire that stemmed from my heart, not the cavern of emptiness that required power to fulfill it. Right now, I wanted Orin, and not his power.
I made to pull away, but he tilted his chin and captured my mouth with his, parting my lips and sweeping his tongue into my mouth. It was smooth and fucking sexy as hell. For a moment my resolve cracked and my body melted into him. My crotch throbbed against his hardness and my abdomen pressed to his chest as he played my mouth with his lips, filling me with the sweet, sugary taste of butterscotch. My head reeled with sensation and scent, and my hands ached to feel his skin against my palms. But letting go was not an option right now. Bane had entrusted me with the responsibility of getting rid of the shades. I needed to focus.
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