by Kristie Cook
She paused at the bottom of the steps, but didn’t turn around. “Are you going to enlighten me?”
I sighed. “I . . . can’t.”
She barked out a humorless chuckle and resumed her march for the front door.
“Hold on,” I practically begged, and I didn’t even care. I couldn’t lose her. “Tase can. He’s right downstairs. Let me get him.”
Stopping, she turned and folded her arms over her chest again, tapping her foot. I started for the basement stairs, but Alina stopped me with a laugh.
“Did you really think he’d stick around?” she asked. “Tase took off the moment you turned your back on him, knowing you’d blab off to the bitch.”
“I’ll deal with you later,” I growled, before I jumped down the stairs to inspect the basement for myself.
Alina was right. Tase was long gone. Shit.
“Of course he took off,” Michaela huffed. “When the hell would Tase do anything for anyone but himself?”
“I’ll find him, Michaela,” I vowed. “I’ll find him and get the artifact. I promise.”
“Like I can believe your promises,” she sneered. “I can’t ever trust anything you say again, Xandru. But I promise you this: If my brother dies, you can bet the Court will know everything.”
Tase could have punched me a million times in the same spot, and it still wouldn’t compare to the pain in my chest as I watched Michaela stroll out of my house . . . and possibly my life.
I slammed the door and punched the wall before turning on Alina. “Where is he?”
She shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
“Alina,” I growled. “Where were you two hiding the past few weeks?”
“Like I’d tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t you? A boy’s life could be at stake!”
My sister rolled her eyes. “She’s being a drama queen, I’m sure.”
I stalked toward her, and she backed away. “Tell. Me. Where. To. Find. Tase. NOW!”
She flinched, but then leaned forward and yelled back at me. “Why the hell do you care so much about them? Michaela’s wrong! You’re always putting them before us! Do you care at all about your own family?”
“I care about us all!”
“And that’s your fucking problem! You’ve spread your loyalty so thin, you have none. Well, the rest of us don’t give a shit about Gabe or any of the Petrans. We just want to protect our own, and that will never include any of them.”
Rage boiled in my stomach, and it was all I could do to resist throttling my little sister. Her arrogance and lack of compassion, especially for the Petrans, had been taught, though. I reined in my anger and took a different angle.
“Fine,” I said, my voice low, deliberate. “Then think of it this way. You heard Michaela. If this isn’t fixed with Gabe, she goes to the Court with everything. What do you think will happen to Tase then? And to everyone who protects him?”
Alina snorted. “That bitch doesn’t know shit. She has nothing to tell them.”
One side of my mouth lifted in a smirk. “Don’t underestimate Michaela Petran. Especially when it comes to family.”
Chapter 19
Michaela
Everything hurt. My heart was shattered, my chest an open, aching wound. Tears I refused to shed stung my eyes. My throat burned from damming up the sobs, my head pounding with a million whirring thoughts. A vampire shouldn’t hurt this damn much. But apparently our hearts and souls didn’t heal as quickly as our bodies.
Trying not to think about Xandru’s betrayal, I sat in vigil next to Gabe’s bed every spare moment, pleading for him to wake or to show at least some signs of improvement. But if Roman had spoken the truth, Gabe wouldn’t improve until we found the Eye of Valerian and returned it to its so-called cage. Whatever that was.
Tase, the only one who knew the Eye’s whereabouts, had conveniently disappeared. Addie wasn’t able to reach him. According to her, Xandru hadn’t been able to find his brother at any of his usual places, either. At least, that was his story. He evidently had no problem lying and keeping secrets, so for all I knew, he was still protecting Tase.
As for the cage, we had no idea where it could be. Nobody even knew what it was or what it looked like. Roman denied knowing anything more about it, even when Saundra confronted him.
In the meantime, I researched everything I could to try to learn more about the artifact. Addie brought me books, but they lacked information about the Eye, and the top-secret tomes, which may have been the most helpful, couldn’t leave the Court’s restricted library. Enchanted, they couldn’t even be snuck out. So late at night, Addie came over and slept in the chair by Gabe’s side, and I bundled up and trekked through the snow to the back of the City Hall building. I spent two full nights poring over the books in the restricted section.
Not until early morning on New Year’s Eve, six days since Gabe fell ill and three days since anyone had seen Tase, did I discover what I was searching for—on a torn piece of paper taped into one of the oldest books. The handwriting on it was my father’s, the page one of those ripped from his journal, dated June 1854:
It has been confirmed. The Eye of Valerian possesses dark magic, just like the creator himself. I’ve witnessed what this kind of power can do. The blood shed. The lives lost. The souls blackened. I would have destroyed the piece by now, but it is indestructible. The power is seductive and a threat to the safe haven we are creating here. The other leaders and I have agreed that its existence cannot be known outside our small circle, but they do not know of its full power. Not even I do. It must be protected and hidden away for safe-keeping before it destroys again. I will do this, and only I will know its whereabouts, and that shall stay with me until the day I die and beyond.
Yeah, right. Should have done better, Dad.
I noticed he mentioned nothing about a cage, though, making me wonder if Roman had made that part up.
When I returned to the inn as the sun rose, Mammie was floating by the front parlor’s window, the first time I’d seen her since Christmas. Since before Gabe went down.
“Where have you been?” I asked. “I’ve needed you.”
She turned from her gaze out the window with eyes full of sadness. “I’m so sorry, dear. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
She glanced away, frowning. Her image faded out, then back in again. “I’m having trouble. Being here.”
“Here? As in our world?”
She nodded. “I’m trying, but . . . it’s taking more energy than before. There’s a darkness . . .”
“Is it what’s affecting Gabe?”
Her eyes widened. “What’s wrong with Gabe?”
She didn’t know? “He’s been in some kind of coma.”
“Oh, no. Oh, dear.” The news hit her hard, and her image disappeared.
“Mammie?” I called after a minute or two had passed.
“I’m . . . I’m here.” Her voice came from a distance before she slowly reappeared. “I don’t know . . . for how long . . . I can hold it.”
Then I was running out of time. “What do you know about the Eye of Valerian?”
If a ghost could visibly pale, she just did. She clasped her hands together and held them under her chin as she shook her head. “Oh, dear, you do not . . . you do not want to discuss that.”
“I need to know everything I can, Mammie. It’s doing this to Gabe.” I gestured in the general direction of the cottage. “Maybe to you.”
“But . . . that’s impossible. Your father—”
“Buried it under the conservatory to hide it. Gabe found it.”
She gasped, then faded in and out again. “You are sure? But even so . . . it was . . . protected.”
“How?”
She shook her head. “I don’t . . . know. Only your . . . father does.”
Of course. And my father was dead and inaccessible, even by Eloise Sinclair. Even after what happened last time, she’d tried again, before vis
iting Gabe, but to no avail.
“Roman Bishop called it a cage,” I said, “like it’s a physical object. But if that’s true, apparently the Eye was removed from it. We don’t know how. We just know that Tase has the Eye, or at least knows where it is.”
Mammie’s eyes widened with unmistakable fear, and rather than fading, she became more like a strobe light, flashing in and out. “Oh, no! That . . . no good. No good! Michaela . . . must . . . find . . . Protect . . . again! Oh no, oh no, oh no.”
She drifted back and forth, blinking in and out, panic filling her voice.
“Tell me what you know,” I begged, desperate at the thought I was going to lose her. “Why’s it so dangerous?”
“I . . . not know . . .” She blinked out, then in again. “Only Mihail . . .” Out and in. “He’d . . . never tell . . . protected me . . .”
“I need to know what it’s doing to Gabe!”
“My boy,” she cried out. “My boy . . . my boy . . .”
Her voice faded away, her image diminishing into nothing.
“Mammie?” I turned in a circle, searching. “Madame Luiza? Please! Come back. I need you!”
But she didn’t. Maybe she couldn’t.
I rushed through the inn, looking for her by all of her favorite windows, all the while wondering what boy she’d been crying for. Gabe, who was almost like a son to her? Or her actual son, who died two hundred years ago?
“Damn it, Mammie,” I cursed, and then I apologized. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. Please, come back.”
More guilt and sadness swamped me, piling on to the load I already carried. What if she’d never be able to return? I didn’t know what I’d do without her. But throughout the day, as I distracted myself with work, Mammie never reappeared.
Once Sindi woke for the night, she relieved me of my inn duties so I could go back to Gabe while she managed the New Year’s Eve party I had no interest in being a part of.
“If you see Mammie, please tell her I’m sorry.”
She squeezed my shoulder in a very un-Sindi-like gesture. “I’m sure she’s fine. Are you going to be, though? You don’t even want a glass of bubbly at midnight?”
I frowned. “I’m not in a bubbly frame of mind.”
“How about some Jack or José?”
Despite everything, a soft chuckle escaped me. “I wish. But I need to be in my right mind. Just in case something happens.”
Because eventually, something had to happen. Whether it was Tase or Gabe, someone would eventually give. I could only hope it was Tase.
Putting all of my hope into Tase Roca was stupidity at its finest.
But the alternative was unacceptable.
The closer we came to midnight, the more my mind drifted toward territory I’d been avoiding for days. The partiers at the inn grew louder, and I couldn’t help but wonder what Xandru was doing. The revelers started the countdown, fireworks boomed overhead, music played, and people sang and cheered.
I sandwiched Gabe’s hand between mine and leaned my forehead against the edge of the bed, tears rolling down my cheeks and plopping onto the carpet below.
I shouldn’t have been sitting here with my unconscious brother, trying by sheer will to keep him alive. This was not how we were supposed to spend New Year’s. We all should have been at the party, together. Xandru and I should have been sharing a midnight kiss at this moment, Gabe and Aurelia groaning in the background. Our friends should have surrounded us, champagne glasses raised as we toasted in the new year.
Instead, I no longer knew whom I could trust. Sindi and Addie seemed to make up that entire list now. Not that the list had ever been long, but there at least had been one other name that made up for the lack of numbers. I sobbed, a fresh wave of pain racking through me from Xandru’s betrayal.
“Maybe we should leave town,” I whispered to Gabe after I’d regained control. “I probably should have taken both of you far away last summer, and none of this would have happened. We can still go, though. I mean . . . what do we have to stay for?”
Fresh tears rose. The life I’d created was a ruse, built on a foundation of secrets and lies. It was not the life I wanted for Aurelia and Gabe. And for the first time, I could somewhat understand why my parents had sent me away. This was exactly what they’d been trying to protect me from—the dangers of living in this town.
The dangers of loving a Roca.
Swiping hard at the tears, I drew in a shuddering breath. “But I need you to fight this, Gabe, before we can do anything. I need you to come back to me. Please.”
Silence answered my plea.
Hours later, a commotion outside the cottage woke me. I hadn’t realized I’d dozed off, hunched over the edge of Gabe’s bed. Blinking away the haze, I walked out to the living room, grabbed my coat off the rack as I shoved my feet into boots, and went outside to see what the ruckus was. I found Sindi standing at the bottom of my steps with her back to me, arguing with Addie and Xandru, who stood in front of her.
I sucked in a breath at the sight of him, feeling like I’d been sucker-punched in the gut.
His gaze flew up to me. He looked as broken as I felt. And yet, those eyes—they nailed me in place.
Always the fucking eyes.
Sindi glanced over her shoulder. “Damn it. Now look. We woke her up.”
“Kales, we need to talk.” Addie moved for the stairs. She was all bundled up in a beanie hat, black down coat, gloves, boots, and a thick scarf wrapped around her neck, as though she’d been out in the cold for a while, or planned to be.
Xandru moved, too, but Sindi stepped in front of him, shaking her head. “I told you. Addie, yes. You, no.”
Scowling, he shoved his fists into his coat pockets, his gaze riveted on my face.
“We don’t have time for this!” Addie snapped. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen worry etched so deeply into her face as it was now. And was that fear in her eyes?
“What’s going on?” Zipping up my coat, I went out to them, since Sindi was trying to protect me from Xandru, and Addie apparently wouldn’t talk without him.
“I was with Harper Sinclair tonight,” Addie said, a tremble in her voice so slight, I only detected it because I knew her so well. She glanced at the sky, which was starting to show a hint of lighter blue over the eastern mountains. “Well, earlier this morning, anyway. She scribed a message.”
I tilted my head. “Like Eloise does? I thought—”
She cut me off, urgency filling her voice. “She’s still learning to use her powers. They’re a little different than Eloise’s, but that’s not important right now. I know what we need to do for Gabe, and we need to do it fast, or our whole town is at risk. But we need Tase.”
“No shit,” I muttered. “But he disappeared four days ago, remember? And what do you mean, our whole town is at risk?”
“We hoped he’d be here,” Xandru said, ignoring my question.
I squinted at them. “Why the hell would he be here?”
“I’ve been doing locator spells ever since I left Harper,” Addie explained, her words pouring out in a rush. “Xandru and I have been trying to hunt him down. If we don’t find him and the Eye of Valerian . . . it could be bad. Very bad. Bad like what caused the curse on all of you in the first place.”
I gasped. “What? As in another massacre? How do you know this?”
“I just do! I’ll explain later. Right now, we have to find Tase before it’s too late!” She paused, gathering herself. “Every time we get to where he is, he’s gone again. He’s always one step ahead of us. So we’ve been blowing up his phone with messages to meet us here.” Dropping her gaze, she kicked at the snow. “I just hoped . . . I hoped maybe he’d actually do the right thing.”
Tears pricked my eyes again, at both the heartbreak clear in Addie’s voice and my own disappointment. A small part of me also hoped if Tase knew what was at stake, he would have stepped up. I’d tried so hard to believe in him.
I thought we�
�d made big strides at the cemetery, but apparently, he was just that good of a liar. Even when he’d seemed interested in helping Gabe at Thanksgiving, I now knew he’d had an ulterior motive—to corner my brother into handing over the artifact. As much as I’d wanted to believe that he’d done everything for the inn because he felt he owed my family, I’d always suspected there was another reason. I’d been right.
Tase only helped Tase. That’s just who he was.
“So what, we try to trap him?” I asked.
“It won’t be easy. He has this idea that the Eye of Valerian will end his curse,” Xandru said quietly. “It’s a moroi artifact. It goes back to the creation of our kind—both the moroi and the strigoi sides.”
“And what creates may also end.” I exhaled slowly, my breath puffing out in a white cloud. How had we not considered that before? “And that’s what you mean about things going badly? Because it’ll make him go strigoi faster?”
“Alina, too,” Xandru added. “She’s been exposed.”
“And possibly Gabe,” Addie said softly.
“Oh my god.” The air whooshed from my lungs. Gasping for a breath, my gaze darted around, as though answers would appear in the snow-covered lawn. “So what do we do? Call the Court?”
“No!” both Xandru and Addie nearly shouted.
“You know what they’ll do to him,” Xandru said. “Maybe to Alina and Gabe, too.”
My chest heaved again, my stomach plummeting to my feet.
“I’ll do whatever I have to,” Addie vowed, “whatever magic it takes, to get that artifact from him.”
“If he gives it up to anyone, it’d better be me,” an unfamiliar female voice called out from above.
Addie and Xandru both spun around, and my gaze snapped up to find a woman standing on the peaked roof of the inn’s tallest turret—the one above the conservatory. She was tall and thin, dressed in a long black cloak, cinched at the waist, and black boots that reached up under the billowing hem of her cloak. Her face was hidden in the shadows of her hood.
“Question is, will he? He cares only for himself, and you know it,” she said.