Of Wicked Blood: A Slow Burn Romantic Urban Fantasy (The Quatrefoil Chronicles Book 1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  I sniffle, the arctic chill singeing my nostrils as hot tears flood down my cheeks, and glare at the rope as though it has personally wronged me. Anger replaces my grief. I want to wring the neck of the siren, even if it curses me into an early grave. I’m mad enough to believe that I could kill it before it could kill me.

  “Um, guys.” Gaëlle’s breathy voice slashes through my thoughts. “Did I just—did you . . . Did you see that?”

  “That?” I swing around and grip the edge of the well. A firm arm snakes around my waist and levers me away. “Let go, Adrien! I’m not going to jump in.”

  His eyebrows jolt up, vanishing behind a stiff blond, wayward lock. He releases me but doesn’t step back, just to the side. I sense he doesn’t trust me not to jump in.

  I focus on the well again, and sure enough, a jumble of bubbles ripple and foam.

  “Cadence, don’t get your hopes up.” Adrien’s voice is quiet and gentle.

  My heart rattles so hard inside my chest I imagine Adrien must hear its frenzied thumping.

  “It could be the thing in the well.”

  “Or it could be him.” It has to be him.

  “His BCD could’ve inflated and is lifting him—”

  “Will you stop it, Adrien?” I growl.

  Even though I don’t look away from the water, I sense his posture stiffening.

  Something shines in the black well. Slate’s lamp! It must be his lamp!

  The shine grows and grows along with my hope. I lean forward, the stone edge of the well digging into my abdomen. I suddenly wish I hadn’t let Papa take the phone away from me. I want to talk to Slate. I want him to hear my voice. To know that he’s awaited. That we didn’t abandon him.

  I start to shiver with anticipation and have to grit my teeth to prevent them from clacking. The bubbles get larger and fiercer, bursting in time with my pulse.

  Come on. Come on. Come on.

  His hooded head pierces the rippling surface.

  I hold my breath. Wait for him to move. When he tilts his head back, and his eyes, open and bright with life, land on mine, my heart comes untethered and floats up in turn.

  “You’re alive!” I’m not sure whether to cry or smile, so I do both. I ugly-cry and grin so wide my cheeks quiver and ache. “You’re alive. You did it,” I whisper as a great big sob rattles my chest.

  Slate spits out his regulator. “I’m not sure whether to be offended or surprised you doubted I would, Mademoiselle de Morel.” His eyes curve and glitter softly.

  You conceited ass, I think, and would say it out loud if my throat actually worked, but I’m crying, and it’s really hard to talk around tears.

  His arm rises from the water. “De Morel, you got the box ready?”

  “It’s”—Papa clears his throat, as though he, too, has become emotional—“it’s ready, Roland.”

  Slate bobs at the surface, his BCD floating around him like a buoy. “I might be a remarkable mermaid slayer, but I have yet to develop Spiderman’s skill for scaling up walls, so a rope would be greatly appreciated.”

  “Show us the piece,” Adrien says, and I want to smack him for not tossing the rope in to help Slate climb out.

  He must be freezing. And wounded, if the blood that darkened the surface came from him and not the thing.

  Slate raises his arm. Although he doesn’t open his fingers, I spot the shimmering edge of something golden, and my heart wallops my ribs again, this time in excitement.

  A piece of history rests in his glove.

  I stare and stare, refusing to blink.

  “I’d toss it up to you, Prof, but I wouldn’t want to curse you.” Slate smiles, and that smile sets my pulse on fire even though it’s not directed at me.

  The rope drops into the well with a heavy splash. Slate wraps it a few times around the hand not clutching the Quatrefoil leaf. Gaëlle stands behind Adrien, holding part of the rope. I race behind her and grab a length as well.

  Adrien leans back, then Gaëlle, and then me, and the rope tautens. I squeeze the wet, ice-cold fibers, and back up as though I’m carrying Slate alone. I doubt I’m helping much. I’m pretty sure Adrien’s doing most of the work.

  Slate’s head appears over the rim of the well, and then his broad shoulders, and the rest of his long body. He tumbles over, pitching onto the cobbles like a drunk. I release the rope and stride around the two others to reach him, but Adrien bats his arm out.

  “Don’t touch him until he puts the piece in the box,” he says.

  I suck in a startled breath.

  Slate heaves himself up, and even though his body looks whole and unharmed, I catch a tremor in his limbs. The aluminum bottle hooked into his BCD drags the flapping jacket down his arms. Both fall onto the cobbles with a deafening clang.

  Papa wheels in closer to Slate, birch box propped open on his lap.

  Slate takes one step, then another, then extends his arm slowly, as though his elbow isn’t quite cooperating. He shakes so hard that I wonder if it’s from the rush of adrenaline or from the freezing temperature of the water. His lips are purple, and the oval of skin peeking from his hood is as white as Nolwenn’s meringues, except at the bottom right where the skin is marbled and dark like his lips. A fresh bruise? Slowly, he positions his hand over the box, so close his knuckles graze the propped lid. Several seconds later, metal clangs against the leaden lining.

  Papa shuts the box. For a long moment, we stare at it as though expecting the piece to leap out or start rattling, but all is still.

  “Bravo, Roland.” Papa’s congratulatory words cloud in front of him, remaining suspended before dispersing.

  I exhale a puff of frozen air, and then I’m circling the well toward them. Slate must see me coming from the corner of his eyes, because he turns. His shape blurs as new tears rise. I lunge toward him and hook my arms around his neck before muffling my sob against his spongy wetsuit. He stiffens, but I don’t care. I want him to feel how relieved I am that he’s alive. How proud I am that he defeated the monster and won the challenge.

  Hesitantly, his arms curl around my back and press me into him, and then his chin perches on the top of my head. “The Little Mermaid, huh?”

  I laugh, but since I’m midsob, it comes out sounding like a honk from a lunatic goose.

  “I think I’m officially creeped out for life by sirens and wells.” His voice rumbles softly in the cold air. “Not that I was much of a fan of either before.”

  His body isn’t shaking anymore, but he must be freezing. I release his neck, my fingers coming back slick with blood. I gape at them, then at him. From up close, his jaw is swollen and dotted in tiny holes trickling blood.

  “I could’ve used some nail clippers down there. She had one hell of a set of claws. Yeesh.” He shudders. “That iron pick was a good call, Adrien.”

  Nail clippers? She sliced the back of his neck with her nails? Did she also plant them inside his jaw?

  My mind snags on something else. Something silly—the pronoun Slate just used. She . . . My heart tumbles like a tossed coin.

  Something clanks against the floor—his weight belt—and I stare at it, because it’s easier than letting him see how conflicted I feel.

  “Cadence?” Slate speaks my name slowly, as though confused by my mood swing.

  “Turn around. I want to see what she did to your neck.” I hate how testy I sound.

  A frown gusts over Slate’s face, but he indulges me. As he pivots, he peels his hood off, then drops it to the floor. It slaps the stone like a dead fish. The skin on the back of his neck is puckered and leaking blood.

  Gaëlle whispers, “Oh, mon Dieu.”

  “That’s going to need stitches, Roland,” Adrien says.

  “I’ll call Sylvie.” Papa’s already wheeling himself in the direction of our house. “Let’s all get to the house.”

  I stare at Slate’s neck, at his sharp Adam’s apple now.

  It bobs. “Cadence? Are you okay?”

  I swallow an
d scrub my cheeks with my numb hands. “I wasn’t in a well with a monster, so yes, I’m fine.” Even to my ears, I don’t sound fine. I sound mad. I turn sharply and start toward Papa’s wheelchair, grabbing onto the handles and jerking him faster across the square. The wheelchair motor whirrs, and the jostling leaf clinks and clanks.

  Papa tilts his head. “What’s going on with you, ma chérie?”

  “Just emotional.”

  “I can see that. But why?”

  “Because this is all so insane.”

  It’s the truth.

  A piece of it.

  The other piece of truth I’m not sharing with my father is that I’m jealous. Which is all types of crazy, because I don’t know Slate.

  I don’t even like him.

  I shouldn’t care that he saw a girl down there.

  23

  Slate

  This is getting ridiculous.

  I’m not sure there’s more than an inch of skin on me that’s not bruised or beaten or bloody. I clench my teeth as I peel off the wetsuit, trying not to cry like a fucking baby in de Morel’s guest bathroom. Along with the dirty well water, my blood dribbles onto the floor, creating rust-colored tributaries on the white marble slabs. Finally, the whole suit plops to the ground in a wet heap.

  There are eight entire inches of skin that have managed to remain intact. The best eight.

  Putain. What a relief.

  The bathtub is a clawed-foot porcelain recipient of monstrous proportions. I slide into the steaming soup of aloe infused bubbles—Cadence’s call—unable to stop a moan from escaping my lips as the water licks my battered body. The heat all at once hurts and soothes as it thaws out my numbed flesh.

  Now that sensation is coming back, the gash on my jaw where that bitch bit me burns like a mother. And I don’t even want to think about the back of my neck. It’s in fucking ribbons.

  I close my eyes but see the siren, so I pry them open and stare at the moonlit lake beyond the foggy window.

  Not nearly long enough later, two knocks sound on the door of the Jack and Jill bathroom. You’d think that considering their wealth, the de Morels could afford private en suites for all their bedrooms.

  “Slate?” It’s Cadence. “The doctor’s here.”

  “I just got in the bath.”

  “Yeah. Well, just get out.”

  After her effusive hug, which might’ve rated in the top three moments in Slate Ardoin’s pitiful life, she started acting strange. I assumed it was my blood that freaked her out, although, what do I know? Maybe it was seeing me rise back out of that well like a phoenix rising from its ashes.

  Sighing, I get up, sloshing more water onto the tiles. There are four fuzzy ivory towels hanging on the rack. I pull one off and press it to my face and chest. Already its soft off-white fibers are turning a bloody brown. By the time I’ve dried my whole body off, the towel looks like it was used to wipe down a crime scene.

  Rainier insisted I stay the night here, and I didn’t even attempt to turn down his invite. The room is all puffy white pillows and velour throws and crystal light fixtures. Luxury that reminds me of Marseille, of the life I made for myself there, of the life I’ll be going back to as soon as the others face off with their pieces.

  The clothes I changed out of to put on the dive suit are folded on a fat, cushioned chair in the corner of the room. They smell clean. The pure, elegant odor of savon de Marseille. I shake out my shirt, which has been ironed.

  Well, look at that.

  That’s what it’s like for the rich—having little house elves spiffing things up.

  I frown as I put on the shirt. I’m rich now, too. Especially after selling that Renoir. Guess it’s time for me to get a house elf. Spike sure as hell isn’t going to iron my shirts. Although Bastian might.

  Once I’m fully dressed and have run my fingers through my hair, I open the door. Cadence is leaning against the wall in the corridor, dragging her fingernails over the embossed stripes of the wallpaper.

  She’s changed into stretchy black leggings and a heavy gray hoodie with Université de Brume embroidered in navy thread across the front. Her hair’s pulled into a high ponytail, and her face is scrubbed clean. How could I have mistaken the siren for her? Cadence is a thousand times more beautiful than that creature in the well.

  “Hey.” Her scent revs up my heart.

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m supposed to remind you not to tell the doctor the truth about your injuries.”

  I tilt my head to one side and immediately regret it. A sharp pain scissors across my neck, and I groan. “I doubt he’d believe me, anyway.”

  Color rises in her cheeks. “She is from Brume. So, she just might.”

  Ouch.

  Cadence leads me down the hallway, past oil paintings of landscapes and ancient battles, to Rainier’s glass elevator. We get inside, and she punches the button for the ground floor so hard I wince. Especially since she’s gazing murderously up at me.

  What did I do now? Did my assumption that the doctor was a man peeve her? I mean, yeah, it was small-minded but not an egregious affront to the female sex.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Great.”

  And that’s the last word she says to me as the glass box slides down two floors. Cadence strides out first, streaking across the grand foyer like a comet, obviously in a hurry to get away from me. I trail behind, hands shoved in my pockets.

  I recognize the doc, a woman in her sixties with a rope of gray hair and large brown eyes—the purple fairy at the party. My Blair Witch Project crew surround her, probably still here because they don’t trust me to keep quiet.

  I take a seat on the sectional and peel off my shirt, the collar of which is already stained red. Should’ve kept a towel around my neck. Hopefully, de Morel’s little elf works overtime. Then again, if it’s a French elf, probably not.

  “Mon Dieu!” If the doc’s eyebrows shot up any higher, they’d take off.

  As she opens her satchel, I look around the room. Adrien is sitting across from me, elbows propped on his thighs, fingers clasped together and supporting his chin. Gaëlle is perched on the arm of the couch next to Rainier’s wheelchair. Cadence is leaning against the wall beside the picture window, arms still crossed. Her cheek keeps dimpling, and since she doesn’t have dimples, I assume she’s biting the inside of her mouth.

  “That stray dog really did a number on you.” Doc turns my face, eyes going from my jaw to my neck. “You’re lucky Adrien was walking around and found you.”

  So that’s the story? I got attacked by a stray and Adrien, forever the hero, saved me? Damn. Why couldn’t I have just saved myself?

  “Yeah. Thank the good lord his girlfriend kicked him out of bed in the middle of the night. Prof, remind me to thank . . . What’s her name again?”

  It’s a really low blow, and I daresay I’m not too proud of it, but Cadence is still seething, angry with me, and I don’t know . . . it makes me spiteful toward the man she worships.

  The muscles in Adrien’s jaw twitch. “Charlotte.”

  The doctor pats an alcohol-soaked square of gauze against the teeth marks on my jaw. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a wound quite like this. What sort of dog was it?” She’s now putting some kind of ointment on my skin, and it stings.

  “It was—” Adrien starts, but I talk over him.

  “A German Shepherd-pug mix.” I’m going to make this story mine.

  The doctor’s entire face scrunches up. “That’s an . . . odd mix.”

  “Ugly, too. Tiny legs, wrinkly head, beady black eyes, super shaggy.”

  “Are you kids sure it wasn’t a rat?”

  “That’s what I thought, but Adrien insisted it was a dog. Insisted on the mutt’s breed too. Canine mixes are his hobby.”

  Adrien pinches the bridge of his nose.

  “Is that so, Adrien?” The doctor discards the reddened gauze. “I love dogs too. I’ve been meaning to get one but wanted help pi
cking the right breed. Maybe you can suggest one? If you have time, that is. I know teaching keeps you busy.”

  He breathes in, then out and offers the doc a smile. “As soon as I get Slate acclimated to Brume—he just started at the University—I’ll make the time to come see you and discuss breeds.” Damn, the guy is suave.

  “A heart of gold, just like your maman.” The doc’s eyes gloss over with tears, which she whisks away with a couple lash battings.

  There’s a melancholic lull in the atmosphere. Well, crap . . . I’m guessing his mother either left or died.

  “The dog that attacked this boy is going to need to be found.” Doc thankfully puts an end to Mercier’s pity party. “And we need to issue a warning to the college students.”

  “Prof, you called Paw Patrol, right?”

  Adrien stabs me with an irritated look. At least he doesn’t look weepy anymore. “Animal Control. And yes.”

  The doctor asks me a shitload of questions: How did the stray act? Did I provoke it? Was it foaming at the mouth? I fake my way through the answers while she numbs my skin. I grit my teeth as the needle goes in and then break out in little beads of sweat when she sticks me with another anesthetic shot. Wasn’t one enough?

  As she stitches up the back of my neck, she says, “I’ll be putting you on antibiotics. Any allergies?”

  Through clenched teeth, even though I’m not in pain, I answer, “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “And you’ll need a tetanus booster.”

  “Does it come in pill form? I really hate shots.”

  “No.” I hear the snip of scissors and then the plasticky peel of a big-ass Band-Aid. She lifts the hair curling at the nape of my neck and presses the plaster to the numbed skin. “I’ll leave you some antibiotic cream and some extra bandages. Change them once a day. As for the shots, I’d like to give you one for rabies, too.”

  I can handle two shots. I handled a crazy-ass mermaid, I remind myself.

  “In total, you’ll need five doses of the rabies vaccine over the next twenty-eight days.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”