by Linsey Hall
Aerdeca touched Mordaca’s arm. “No, they can’t. That culture has been dead a thousand years.”
“That won’t stop Del.”
Shock socked me in the stomach. Mordaca shouldn’t know about my gift for bringing back the past. “How do you know that?”
“I have my ways. And you have yours. If you’re lucky, those people will have a cure. You can bring their healer back from the past and beg, bribe, or steal a cure.”
It might work. But I’d have to be sure to send the healer and her culture back to her own time when we were done.
“Where do they live?” Roarke asked.
“High in the Andes Mountains. They’re a Phantom branch of the Inca called the Incate.”
“Phantom branch?”
“Yes. A rare breed that are half-bloods, allowing them to be sentient.”
Like my people. “That’s a rare breed of supernatural.”
“Yes. There have been a few settlements around the world. One in Wales, this one in Peru, another in China.”
I didn’t mention that my people were the Welsh Phantom half-bloods. The World Walkers, as they were called. Though I wondered if these Incate were World Walkers, too, I didn’t ask. The cure was more important now, and I didn’t want to reveal too much about myself.
“What do you know about these Incate?” I asked.
“They died out about four hundred years ago after contracting an illness from the Spanish Conquistadors. It was a rare strand of smallpox that could infect Phantoms.”
“Freaking colonialists,” Nix muttered.
“In fairness, our people did it to the Native Americans here,” Aerdeca said.
“Yeah, we’re jerks, too, with our smallpox blankets and Trail of Tears.” Nix sighed, dejection clear in the sound. “Do you know where to find the Incate?”
“Not exactly, no. You’ll have to find them,” Mordaca said. “Which won’t be easy. They lived in a mountain settlement, similar to the famous human settlement of Machu Picchu. They had an impressive array of protections guarding their home, which allowed them to hold out against the Spanish as long as they could, but they didn’t last.”
“So we have to get past whatever guards their settlement,” Roarke said.
Aerdeca nodded. “And pray they can give you a cure.”
“What if they can’t?” I asked.
Mordaca glanced back at Caden, who was starting to shift as if he were coming to, and pointed to him. “That.”
I swallowed hard. “Whoever is controlling him—could they control me, too?”
It meant I’d fall right into the Shadows’ hands—forced to do whatever they wanted me to do.
“Perhaps,” Mordaca said. “You weren’t cursed in the same way that he was. His was deliberate. I don’t understand the intricacies of your situation. The way the curse attached itself to you—it’s strange, though not unheard of. You’ll have to see if you can find out more from the people who created the curse.”
“We just have to find them,” I said.
“And that’s the tricky part,” Mordaca said.
Chapter Five
An hour and a half later, the kitchen looked like the study hall of the local college. Books and laptops were scattered across the kitchen table, with me, Nix, and Cass spread out and researching the Incate.
Roarke and Aidan sat in the living room, scouring the internet on two sleek laptops while keeping an eye on a sedated Caden. Guards would be coming by later, some of Roarke’s demon minions, but until then, we didn’t want to let Caden out of our sight.
After Aerdeca and Mordaca had collected their payment and left, we’d gotten lucky. Our dragon senses had latched onto the rough location of the Incate in the Andes Mountains in Peru. We knew the general direction of where to go, and our dragon senses would really light up once we arrived. The question was more about what we’d face when we got there and what the Incate would want in payment for the cure.
If they had one.
We might only have one shot at this, and we wanted to get it right—especially the payment part. Their culture was over five hundred years old. They wouldn’t want cash.
Since we wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow morning, we’d decided to use this time to research.
Once again, books to the rescue.
We read, the three of us flipping pages quickly as we searched old treatises for explorers’ accounts of their trading expeditions to visit the Incate. They were masters of booby traps protecting their settlements, the explorers wrote, but we hadn’t yet found what trade goods they preferred.
With every page that I turned that didn’t give me what I sought, the worry grew larger in my mind. It was like a great, hulking beast, growing fatter with every minute. Though the kitchen was bright with warm light and I was surrounded by friends and family, the darkness outside seemed to press in on the windows.
It was so much easier to be afraid at night, and this curse had hit me out of the blue.
Nix reached out, grabbing my hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
I looked up, meeting her gaze. Worry and love were clear in her blue eyes.
“You can tell I’m stressed?” I said. Anxiety was a noose around my neck.
“Who wouldn’t be?” Cass said. “This is your second curse in less than a month.”
“That is more than normal,” Nix said.
Though curses weren’t uncommon—far from it, considering that it was a major magical tool—two this close together was really bad luck.
“Yeah, I’m worried.” Understatement. I squeezed Nix’s hand. “It’s just that if this is a curse from the Shadows, which I think it is, that means I’m susceptible to their suggestion. I wasn’t worried about resisting their call to be their queen, but now…”
“If you’re not in control of your own actions, then you’ve got a problem,” Cass said.
“Exactly.” It was like my worst nightmare, times one thousand. Part of me wanted to run out of here and find more evil demons and steal their powers, just so I could feel in control and build my arsenal. “And I can’t help but wonder if this was a trap.”
“Trap?”
“Yeah. They can’t find me because of my concealment charm. But if they’ve learned of my connection to Roarke and know that he would hunt his brother…”
“Then they use Caden as bait,” Nix finished. “Once you find him, he’s like a sneaky bomb meant to detonate and hit you with his curse.”
“Oh, shit,” Cass breathed. “That’s bad. And a real Hail Mary of a plan.”
“Makes sense, though,” I said. “They failed with Draka, but learned about Roarke and me when they captured us last week in Germany. Now they’re scrambling for a new plan.”
“It’s a good one,” Cass said. “Using your connection to Roarke is smart.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “We’re playing right into their hands. They know more than we do, and they set a trap that I walked into.”
“You had to help Roarke save his brother,” Nix said. “That’s what we do.”
“And the Shadows know that.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair. “It’s not that I regret helping Roarke. Of course not. I regret that I didn’t think about this more. The Shadows are strong and smart. If they set this trap, it means I’m up against more than I realized.”
“You’ll beat them,” Cass said.
“She’ll only beat them if we keep researching,” Nix said. “We need to know what the Incate are going to want in exchange for a cure.”
“If there is one.” Dread clutched at my stomach.
Cass gripped my hand hard. “There will be one. We will work this out.”
“Worse has tried to get you than this,” Nix said. “You came back from the freaking dead.”
I laughed weakly, though my stomach still felt a bit off. Dying wouldn’t be so bad compared to becoming a pawn of the Shadows, a tool to be used in their horrible plot. Whatever that was.
“I vow it on my PBR.” Cass gri
nned.
This time, I actually laughed.
“You know she means it, now,” Nix said.
“Thanks, guys.” I squeezed each of their hands. With them at my back, this was possible. We’d been through worse, right?
Before I could dwell on it, the doorbell rang.
Cass jumped up. “Food!”
“Perfect.” Nix stood. “We’ll eat, refuel, then hit the books again.”
“Good plan.” My stomach grumbled, hunger replacing the worry that had soured it earlier.
We went out into the living room in time to see four massive demons enter, each carrying a big paper bag that smelled like Chinese food.
I joined Roarke and smiled at him. “Guards and delivery service?”
“Can’t beat it,” he said, then went to greet the guards. He handed off the bags to us, then gave them directions about watching Caden.
Nix, Cass, Aidan, and I returned to the kitchen, unloading the bags. There were at least twenty white cartons with the familiar red script, along with a few handfuls of fortune cookies.
“China Palace!” Nix said. “My fave.”
Roarke entered. “I ordered a little bit of everything.”
“Perfect.” I hunted through the loot and found a carton of my favorite—Szechuan veggies. I stuck it next to the microwave, then poured myself a mug of red wine from the stash that Roarke kept just for me. Armed with my cup and my carton, I returned to the table.
Cass joined me, her usual PBR in one hand and a container of General Tso’s chicken in the other. She’d always had the palate of a frat boy. She sat next to me and shoveled in a mouthful, an expert with chopsticks.
She chewed happily. “Perfect.”
While Aidan and Roarke demolished six miscellaneous containers each, Nix squirted about a gallon of hot sauce into her spicy pork.
“I don’t know how you don’t have steam coming out of your ears,” I said.
“I’m caliente.” She grinned. “It just absorbs into me.”
I smiled back. “You guys are the best, you know that?”
“Yeah, we know,” Nix said.
“But so are you.” Cass pointed her chopsticks at me. “Now eat up because we’ve got a big job ahead of us.”
Around midnight, we finally found our answer. With the carcasses of white paper cartons scattered around, Nix held up a treatise written by a female trader in the eleventh century.
“They like obsidian!” Nix cried. “It says so, right here. Emisia the Bold visited them in 1025 AD to establish trading relations with her village on the other side of the continent. The treasure that the Incate were most interested in was obsidian.”
“Volcanic glass?” Cass asked. “Like my daggers.”
“Exactly,” Nix said. “But ideally the rarer colors. Reds and greens, not black.”
“At least we know what they like,” Roarke said. “This was getting dire.”
“I have a colleague who collects rare rocks,” Aidan said. “I’ll give him a call. We can have something ready for you by tomorrow morning, hopefully.”
“Thank you.” I smiled at him. Damn, it was good to have friends like these.
“Perfect,” Roarke said. “Just tell me what I owe you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Aidan said.
“I insist.” Roarke’s voice was firm.
Aidan smiled. “We’ll work it out.”
Before they could get into a fight over who would pay—though I couldn’t help but appreciate two generous guys—I stood. “Now that we have that answer, I need another shower and to hit the hay.”
“You really don’t smell like rotten eggs anymore,” Nix said.
“I kinda feel like I do.” I grimaced.
“It’s dissipated,” Cass said. “I swear on my PBR.”
“Be that as it may, I’d feel better with a shower.” I met each of their gazes in turn. “Thanks for the help.”
“Always,” Cass and Nix said in unison.
We split for the night, Cass, Nix, and Aidan heading back to town. Guards were going to keep an eye on a sedated Caden while Roarke and I got some sleep. They’d moved him to a windowless room in the basement—less opportunity for escape.
I went upstairs with Roarke. At the top of the landing, I turned to him. “I’m just going to shower, okay?”
“You really don’t smell,” he said.
“I know. Cass wouldn’t have sworn on her PBR if she didn’t mean it. But you have a pretty sweet shower, so I’m going to make use of it.”
He leaned down and kissed me. I clung to him for a moment, enjoying the warm press of his lips, then pulled away.
It didn’t take me long to shower. Though I wanted to linger in the enchanted grotto that Roarke had going on in the guest bathroom, I wanted to see him more. So I hurried out, rubbed myself dry, and took a good whiff.
My muscles nearly sagged in relief. I didn’t smell.
With hope a bright light in my chest, I adopted my Phantom form. Just to check.
Unfortunately, I was still vaguely gray.
So, still cursed.
But at least I didn’t smell. And we had a plan.
I dropped my Phantom form and drew in a breath, trying to banish the queasiness—we could handle this, we would handle this—then pulled on a robe and hurried toward Roarke’s bedroom.
The hallway was dim and quiet, but warm light glowed from Roarke’s room at the end of the hall. When I entered, he was standing with his back to me, looking down into a dresser drawer. The dresser was massive, like the rest of the furniture, but it fit well into the large bedroom. Mountain-chic, like the rest of the house.
Roarke turned, a smile on his face. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah.”
My gaze riveted to the small box in his hand. “What’s that?”
He glanced down at it, then held it out. “For you.”
“A present?”
“Yes.”
I smiled and approached, then reached for the small black box that was about four inches square. A jewelry box? I’d never been a big fan of diamonds and pearls.
I cracked it open to reveal the ugliest bracelet I’d ever seen. It was made of rough black beads, all misshapen and weird. My heart leaped and I gasped.
“Is this what I think it is?” I touched it reverently.
“If you think it’s a lucky charm made by the fae of Ireland, then you are correct.”
“Oh my gosh.” I glanced up. “How did you find this? This is the bracelet of Eire. One of the luckiest charms in the world. I thought it was owned by some Russian billionaire.”
It was like the Hope Diamond of lucky talismans. One of a kind and exceedingly valuable. I made a point to keep up to date with the most famous lucky objects. For the most part, I stuck to quantity rather than quality when it came to lucky charms. But this…this was quality.
“It was,” Roarke said. “But he could be persuaded.”
I arched a brow. “Not persuaded in the same way you persuaded the Kings of Hell to follow your rules, right?”
He laughed, then looped an arm around my neck and pulled me in for a brief kiss. “No. Persuaded in the normal way. With some begging and cash.”
“I didn’t realize you believed in lucky talismans.”
“I’m still not sure about them, but you like them, so…”
I grinned, then stood on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his lips, speaking against them. “You are the most thoughtful man.”
He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me tight against him.
I kissed him hard. He groaned and sank his hands into the damp strands of my hair. I softened the kiss, reveling in the taste of him as I ran my hands over his strong chest.
He pulled away and kissed a line down my neck, biting lightly at the slope where it met my shoulder.
I gasped. “I want you.”
“All of me?” he murmured.
“Everything.” My mind spun with images of what was to come. I wan
ted it all. After everything we’d been through, now was the time. I couldn’t wait any longer.
He dropped to his knees, parting the robe above the sash and letting his lips hover over my skin. The heat of his breath sent a shiver racing through me. I ached for his touch.
“Please,” I begged.
When his tongue darted out to trace a circle around my belly button, I sank my fingers into his hair and closed my eyes, transported by the pleasure of his touch.
“You taste amazing,” he murmured.
“You feel amazing.”
“Just you wait.” He nipped at my skin and I gasped. “This is nothing. The best is yet to come.”
Chapter Six
Though we hadn’t slept as much as we should have—for obvious and amazing reasons—we woke early the next morning. We were unsure of how long it would take to find the Incate, so we’d planned on an early start.
But when the alarm rang, I was deep in dreamland, reliving everything Roarke and I had done the night before. I groaned and rolled over, meeting Roarke halfway. His hair was mussed and his eyes sleepy, but he was so handsome that it hurt my heart to look straight at him.
“Morning.” His voice was rough. If we’d had time, I’d have jumped on him again.
“Morning.” I pressed a kiss to his lips, savoring him for the briefest moment.
Before I could forget the importance of today’s mission and toss our plans aside, I pulled away.
“We’d better get going,” I murmured.
“Agreed. Big day ahead.”
Yeah. Huge day. We had to get a cure to this curse, or…
I didn’t even want to think about it.
We climbed out of bed, and we showered quickly in separate bathrooms. After I climbed out, I pulled on fresh clothes. By the time I made it downstairs, Cass had arrived. She was sitting at the counter, drinking a coffee, with two black backpacks on the counter next to her.
“Roarke is downstairs, checking on Caden,” she said.
“Thanks.” I nodded at the backpacks. “That’s the obsidian?”
“Yep. An assortment of red and green, with a bit of black as filler. The small pocket on your bag contains potions from Connor. Translation, tonics. Drink them before you have to speak to the Incate healer. You’ll be able to communicate with her even though you don’t speak her language.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a small black stone, which she held out. “Even better, Aidan found a transportation charm.”
