Finally, deep inside me, a faint bloom of magic unfurled. That same primal silkiness as when I’d portalled. I caught my breath, barely daring to hope. Eyes screwed tight, I visualized stoking that bloom from a pale pink nub to a deep red bloom, the flower growing and stretching, pushing into every inch of me and flowing out into Rohan.
“Nava.” It was a whisper and his eyes only fluttered open for the briefest millisecond, but my heart soared.
“I’m here.”
It was like a fever breaking. He didn’t wake up, but he became warm to the touch, his color turned normal, and his breathing evened out, deep and steady.
Exhausted, I crawled onto the bed beside him and let myself sleep.
“Nee?”
I rubbed my eyes, but Leo wasn’t a hallucination. “You shouldn’t be here. You’ll get sick.”
“I’ll be okay for a short period.” She already sounded strained from being on this side of the wards. “Rabbi Abrams helped me across.”
“You told him?”
“Old news.” She stood at the edge of the bed. “Ro’s okay?”
Rohan stirred and rolled over, the first movement he’d made.
Tension ebbed out of my body. I motioned for her to follow me out of his room so we didn’t wake him.
“He will be.”
“And you?” she said.
“What about me?”
Leo grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs into my room. She planted me in front of my mirror.
Daylight highlighted my every flaw better than HD. My hair was a snarled mess and my eyes were bloodshot with dark circles under them.
“Have you showered?” she said.
“I was busy.”
“You didn’t eat or leave his side for two days. You gave Drio third degree burns. Not to mention how weird you were at breakfast with me. Something’s wrong with you.” Leo shoved me onto the bed, snagging my arm in a death grip.
“Ow!”
“Hold still,” she snapped. She screwed her eyes shut, face scrunched in concentration. “You’ve been poisoned.”
“I had the flu.”
“It’s poison and it’s making you crazy worrying about the people you love. Was it the oshk?”
“Impossible. It was only a drop and it didn’t behave like Sweet Tooth.” I tugged but was held fast. “Naomi and Jake with the drug, Ro touching the oshk, the effects hit them immediately. They got a happy high followed by this intense darker moment when they were denied the object of their desire, and then, well, they either died or came out of it. Mine was more groggy, sleep for a week sickness. It wasn’t the secretion.”
“It most definitely was. You absorbed a drop in its pure form,” Leo said. “You can’t use humans or Rasha as a template for the secretion’s behavior when affecting someone with witch magic. Come to mama, you little bastard,” she muttered, twisting my arm like she was wringing out the poison.
I curled double, panting. Her touch had woken the venomous snakes in my veins, hissing and snapping and not wanting to be pulled out from my skin into the light of day. I let out a low moan.
“The poison is in deep.” Leo’s voice was reedy, sweat dripping off her brows.
“Leonie?” Drio stepped into the room. “What are you doing here?”
My head snapped up and I prayed he wouldn’t understand what he saw. I tried to jerk free but Leo hissed for me to stay still, that she wasn’t done.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I’m just… I’ll come find you later,” she told him.
He didn’t budge, brows furrowed, his gaze locked on her hands doing their poison-removal.
“She has her industrial first aid,” I said through gritted teeth, racked with tremors from the de-poisoning process.
Leo gave a pained laugh. My forearms, Leonie’s hands, all were slick with black goo.
Drio grabbed one of her hands, forcing it against my iron bedpost.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, returning her hand to my arm. That little amount of iron wouldn’t hurt. She ate salt, too. No, the only thing hunching her head deeper and deeper into her neck and bowing her spine were the wards.
Drio recognized the effects on her. “But you crossed the ward line.”
“I’m a riddle.”
“I’m good now,” I said brightly. “That first aid certification really came in handy.”
“Nava.” Leo sighed. She pulled the poison away from me, stretching it like taffy before condensing it into a small, hard ball and crushing it to dust between her hands.
“No. No.” Drio was a blur, flash stepping up to Leo and away again. He came into focus, ramming his fist into the doorframe on the other side of the room hard enough to splinter the wood.
I flinched.
Leo got to her feet, pale, her still-coated hands planted on her hips. She sneered at him. “You’re a smart man, Drio. Did you really not put it all together before now? Or did you know deep down and not want to admit it?”
“You’re a PD.”
“Yeah. I’m also the woman you’ve been sleeping with and the person who just healed her best friend. If you can’t reconcile all those parts of me, then fuck you.”
Drio scrubbed a hand over his face, half-curled over like he’d been punched.
I crossed my fingers that I was wrong about him. That when faced with the truth, he’d choose the reality of Leo over his prejudices.
He snapped straight up and jerked a finger at her. “You have two minutes to get out of my sight. After that, I see you? I’ll kill you. Clear?” he snarled.
Leo didn’t back down from the menace rolling off him. In fact, she looked a breath away from taking out her silver eyebrow ring and stabbing him with it. “Crystal.”
He flashed out.
She dragged in a breath, her hands trembling. “Guess you were right about him. I thought…” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now.”
I pulled her into a fierce hug. “I didn’t want to be right. Do you have somewhere to go?”
“Yeah. You good?”
“Only because of you. It’s out.” I stepped back, searching her face. Clear-headed once more, I didn’t regret my efforts to heal Ro, but my behavior over the past couple of days had been crazy messed up.
I practically strong-armed her out to her car. “Go. I almost lost Ro. I can’t lose you, too. Get out of here and go away for a few days. Hide.”
One more hug and a promise from her to call me if she needed me. I jogged down the drive, following her car, standing guard until she’d turned the corner at the end of the block. Leo had been forced into hiding and I couldn’t be there for her lest I risk the Brotherhood finding out about her.
I locked down any telltale emotion and went in search of the massive loose end.
Drio, still in his street clothes, was in the Vault laying into the bag with murder in his eyes. He pounded on it bare-fisted, his knuckles split and bleeding. “You let me be with that–”
The hits intensified.
“Not a ‘that.’ Leonie. Beautiful, wonderful Leo.”
“She’s a demon.”
I swallowed, inching closer, my hands up. “She can’t help who the sperm donor was. And you know how amazing she is. Why does it change things? Why are you acting like it’s personal?”
“Because it is!” he roared.
I tensed but he just stood there, head bowed, one hand pressed over his eyes. He slid down the wall onto the padded flooring.
I’d given up on this conversation continuing when he spoke.
“You know how I met Ro?” he said.
“You were paired up for a mission?”
“I was fifteen.” To Rohan’s thirteen. I blinked. He’d known him ten years? “My father is a civil engineer, specializing in water conservation. He was transferred to L.A. for a year, so I had to train at that chapter house.” Drio gave a faint smile. “I took one look at Rohan’s emo bullshit and thought ‘fuck, no’ but the only other initiate was
this eight-year-old brat called,” his voice went flat and unimpressed, “River.”
“Like you’d hang out with some hippy kid.” I folded myself onto the floor.
“I picked Rohan as the lesser of two evils. Not that I was always sure I’d made the right choice, but there was one good thing about him.”
“What?” The faster I humored him, the faster I got an answer about what really mattered here.
Drio was silent a long time before he fished his phone out of his pocket with a shaking hand. He opened his photos, flicking through them, then slowly handed the cell to me, like he was parting with some great treasure.
I sat down beside him.
The photo in question depicted a girl of East Indian heritage with a pixie cut and nose ring. Her knowing grin was coupled with gold eyes that were startlingly familiar. “Is this Asha?”
Rohan’s beloved cousin.
Drio swallowed and nodded, taking the phone away from me and pressing it close to his chest.
“Were you? Did you…”
“It took me two years to convince her to be my girlfriend.” His smile was filled with such pain and love that it hurt to look at it.
It was my turn to drop my head in my hands, my heart breaking for him. “How long were you together?”
“Five years.”
From the moment I’d met Drio and Rohan, I’d been obsessed with knowing their history. Their big bomb of a secret. Now, I’d do anything not to know because I knew how this ended.
“I killed her.”
I flinched at the words fired like gunshots. “No. Demons killed her because Ro was too fucked up from fame and he wasn’t there for her.”
Drio laughed harshly. “Asha announced she was coming to live with me in Rome. I had other ideas. For me, the thrill of the hunt was the greatest rush in the world. After two years, I’d become one of the best hunters. One of the most addicted. It was a high that being tied in one place to a long-term girlfriend couldn’t compare to.” He rested his head against the concrete wall, turning the phone over and over in his hands. “I’d given her some bullshit excuse about the importance of the mission to keep her away.” Drio didn’t look at me as he spoke, each new detail striking a blow into my heart at what they’d all suffered. “Ro found out and we had a huge fight. He said if I wasn’t going to treat his cousin properly I didn’t get to have her, and he told her the truth.”
“He had no right.” Rohan had said he’d gotten cruel. That his opinion of himself had been arrogantly off-the-charts. Fame might have been the cause, but Asha was the tragic consequence. That didn’t mean it was anyone’s fault other than the demon’s.
I curled my fingers into my palms so I didn’t reach out for him. Drio wouldn’t want my sympathy. “Your flash stepping,” I said. “It’s because you run into danger.”
“It’s because the moment I became Rasha, I was running away from her.” His voice was thick with self-loathing.
“Did you still love her?” He glared at me for even having dared asked that. “Exactly. And you’d stayed with her those first two years of hunting. That’s not running, Drio. Trust me, I know what is.”
Hope flashed across his face, but he shook it off. “Asha flew to Rome to confront me but Mandelbaum said all the right things to keep me hopped up, fighting the good fight, and I told her to go home. I’d make time for her later.” His voice cracked in pain. He exhaled. “I guess the demon I was hunting spied us together. She got to Asha, then disappeared. Asha…” He pressed his lips together. “Asha is dead.”
Was this the first time he’d said that out loud? My heart cracked a hundred times more. I reached for his hand, but he jerked it out of reach.
“The one bright part of my life was gone, and it was my fault because I stupidly believed that something else mattered more. Because I betrayed her.”
“Stop,” I pleaded.
Drio flexed his fingers, wincing. “Leo betrayed me and you betrayed me.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d lump me in on the blame, but yeah. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I don’t care.”
I listened to his fading footsteps. All the trust and goodwill and friendship that I’d built with him was gone. He wouldn’t rat me out to the Brotherhood because that would mean ratting Ro out, but the man that had walked out of this room was no longer on my team. I’d lost Drio and my world was bleaker for it. I already missed the stupid psycho with his fierce devotion and wry take on the world.
No one would ever be Asha for him, but him and Leo could have been something new together, calming each other’s rough edges and brightening the dark parts. But if they each spiraled fully and completely into that darkness? I pressed the heel of my hand into my breastbone, rubbing at the sting, but it didn’t ease the hollow worry.
Chapter 22
Ro was awake when I checked on him. “My magic,” he whispered, white-knuckling the sheets. “I can’t get it to work.”
Adrenaline spiked through me. I reached out for him, then froze. “At all?”
He rubbed his hands briskly over his arms. “When I reach for it, I hit a dead zone. I can’t…”
The anguish in his voice lashed me.
“It’s still there.” It had to still be there. “I’ll be back.”
I ran out of the room, sprinting into my bedroom to call Dr. Gelman. The screen on my burner phone had cracked in my outburst earlier, but it worked. I counted the rings, willing her to answer.
“Nava, now’s not a good time.”
“Please. I tried to heal Rohan and now his magic doesn’t work.” I slid down the wall, my hand pressed to my mouth, swallowing the metallic bile in the back of my throat.
“Coming,” she said and hung up.
I stood at the gate, gripping the iron bars, waiting for her to arrive. I hit the scanner the second I saw the car. Dr. Gelman’s sister, Rivka, was in the driver’s seat. She popped the locks on the door and I scrambled in the backseat. “Thank you.”
“No more breaking into my house.” The resemblance between her and Dr. Gelman, her younger sister, was strengthened by the aging that Gelman’s cancer had added to her features.
“Never again, I swear. I’m sorry.”
Rivka nodded and sped through the grounds.
I helped Dr. Gelman out of the car and up the front stairs, forcing myself to accommodate her slow pace.
“Isaac.” Rivka stopped inside the foyer.
My eyes darted between them. They’d dated years ago and he’d broken her heart. Should I have cleared this visit with him?
“Rivka. Esther.” He gave a half-bow, clearly puzzled.
“They need to help Ro,” I pleaded.
He patted my shoulder. “It’s all right, Navela. Take them to him.”
Ro was sitting in bed, his eyes closed. He kept tensing his muscles. No blades popped out.
“Ro?” I said.
“Not now.”
“Ah. The illustrious Rohan. We didn’t get a chance to meet in Prague.”
Rohan opened his eyes at the sound of Dr. Gelman’s voice. “Sorry?” He was giving me a what-the-fuck look.
I helped Dr. Gelman into a chair. “This is Dr. Gelman and her sister, Rivka.”
“Also Dr. Gelman,” Rivka said, moving to the side of Ro’s bed. “A real doctor, unlike this one.”
My Gelman snorted.
“I understand you’re having some trouble with your magic?” Rivka reached for his hand. “May I?” He placed his hand in hers. She clasped it, asking him what had happened. After he’d finished up, she nodded and placed his hand on the blanket. “Your magic is still there.”
“What’s the bad news?” he asked.
“It’s tangled up with the magic of the shedim and the other Rasha to such an extent that I can’t unravel it.”
“Is that all it is?” I backpedalled, seeing the flash of hurt on Ro’s face like somehow that wasn’t bad enough. “I mean, who can? Unravel it?”
“The dem
on and the Rasha are the sole causes,” Rivka assured me. Her sympathetic smile faded. “But I don’t know of any witch who has the power to break this. I’m sorry.”
Rohan swung his feet out of bed. “Forget it. Thanks for trying.” He strode to the door.
“Ro.”
He didn’t glance back.
The two women murmured platitudes about giving him time before they left. Their concern was wasted on me. I thanked them and walked them to their car, but I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.
I’d scoured every inch of the house and most of the grounds before I found him.
Rohan had hidden away in a secluded back corner of the garden, sitting on the ground, his back against a tree. His knees were drawn up to his chest, his arms covering his head, the only sound his harsh, broken exhales.
Giving up his music had cost him, but he’d been able to get back to it. Losing his magic? It would destroy him. He had to have his powers. That’s all there was.
And I could get it back for him even if it was the worst thing I ever did.
“Who says the offer is still on the table?” Lilith had accepted my container of red velvet cupcakes from the finest cupcake store in town as her due. She licked the last of the frosting off her fingers. “Especially with your new condition on the agreement.”
A light breeze provided relief to the evening heat, teasing the strands of her hair and the hem of her coral sundress. White-capped waves danced under a brilliant blue sky, and the beach-goers here at English Bay were in a festive mood.
Where was the rain and gloom when you needed it? If I was going to step into the role of cold-hearted betrayer, I didn’t need the fucking sun mocking me. I wanted my treachery on an appropriate stage, my villainy for all to see, because the thought that I could do this and get away with it, even coming out like some kind of hero, was killing me.
I am David, thinking outside-the-box. Fighting on my own turf and playing to win.
I sipped my iced latte, shifting to take up more room on the bench so the couple who approached us would find somewhere else to sit. “The memory you experienced before was nothing compared to the passion between Rohan and me now.”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 111
