by Sarah Piper
I glanced around for a boulder or log, anything I could climb on top of to escape this deadly vapor, but there was nothing but tangled vines and giant, sinister trees in all directions. I tried to walk faster, hoping I’d find another path, but that only made it worse; the mist seemed to be chasing me, thickening around my ankles, slowly working it’s way up to my calves, my knees, my thighs. Panic buzzed through my limbs, but there was nowhere to run, no escape.
I thought of the man in the Six of Swords, trapped in his burning city.
Taking a deep breath, I forced the panic back down, reaching instead for my magic. It swirled inside me, warming my skin, but no matter how hard I tried to call it forth, it wouldn’t come.
The mist kept climbing, wrapping around my hips, my waist, my chest, squeezing me as if it were a giant python. I coughed and gasped, but I couldn’t get enough air. Mist filled my lungs, burning my throat, making me gag.
The realization sank in my gut like a stone.
Whatever devilry had invaded my realm, there would be no escaping it.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even gasp.
I dropped to my knees, and then fell forward, my face smashing into the rocky soil. The mist swept over me fully, enshrouding me in a blanket of white so thick and impenetrable, it was as though I’d never even existed at all.
I was just… gone.
Twenty-Nine
EMILIO
Why am I on the floor?
I looked around my bedroom, trying to get my bearings. It was dark outside, which meant I’d slept the day away. My mouth tasted like I’d eaten a full ashtray, and a hacking cough burned my lungs.
I was also naked, and my clothes were in tatters on the floor around me, which could only mean one thing.
At some point in the middle of the night, I’d shifted.
An injury was the only explanation. I healed faster in wolf form; unconscious shifting was my body’s self-defense mechanism.
So what the hell had set it off?
Gingerly, I got to my feet, checking myself over for any signs of injury, but other than the cough and that horrid taste in my mouth, everything seemed fine.
The fire at Gray’s place must’ve done a number on my system—more than I’d realized last night.
Desperate for some coffee, I threw on a T-shirt and sweats and headed out into the main area of the house, surprised no one else was around. They were all late risers, but by sundown I’d usually find someone sniffing around for food.
I thought about banging on some doors, but figured coffee was more important. Caffeine first, then a group wakeup call.
After that, we needed to hash out the next phase of our plan, including what—if anything—we were going to do about Fiona.
I walked past the living room and peeked over at the couch, wondering if Gray and Asher were still cuddled up. I’d found them there late last night, and covered them with a blanket, but like everywhere else in the main area, the couch was empty.
I wondered if they’d decided to work out the last of their differences in a way that required a little less conversation.
In that case, maybe I wouldn’t go banging down his door just yet.
Chuckling to myself, I headed for the kitchen, but before I got much further, a strange sensation crept up my spine, raising the hairs on the back of my neck and stopping me cold.
I whipped around, certain I was being followed.
But I was alone.
I scanned the living room, convinced I wasn’t imagining things. Something was off—I could feel it. I could almost smell it.
“Guys?” I called out. No answer.
I knocked on Ash’s door, but he didn’t respond. When I peeked inside, I found his room empty, his bed still made up from yesterday.
Gray’s room was empty too.
Ronan must’ve heard the racket—he emerged from his room, coughing like the devil.
“Damn, this sucks,” he said, clearing his throat. “What’s—”
“Gray with you?” I asked him.
“No, I thought she was with Ash. They—” I didn’t hear the rest. I was already bolting down the basement stairs.
Ronan followed, close on my heels.
“Darius?” I called down.
He was just coming out of his bedroom, looking as bleary-eyed and wrecked as Ronan. He was also coughing.
“Where’s Fiona?” I asked.
He looked around in utter confusion, his brows knitting together. “She was… right here.”
“Gray and Ash are gone, too,” I said, heading back upstairs. The three of us scoured the place, even checking the yard and the woods around the perimeter, but there was no sign of them.
My gut felt like I’d swallowed a handful of sharp rocks.
“Do you think it was Fiona? How late were you awake?” I asked Darius, trying to piece together the timeline.
“That little bitch,” Ronan said. “All that bullshit about how sorry she was.”
“I don’t believe it was her,” Darius said.
Ronan scoffed. “You don’t want it to be her. There’s a difference.”
“She was in restraints. I had my eyes on her until well after sunrise. It’s only a hour after sunset now. That wouldn’t have left her much of a window to escape.”
“Maybe she had help,” Ronan said.
“From whom?”
“Jonathan,” I said. “You heard her last night—she still loves him, even after everything.”
Darius shook his head. “I could buy that, but he didn’t know she was here. No one did. I kidnapped her from her mother’s home in New York, sedating her immediately. She’s been in my presence ever since—no calls, no nothing.”
“But no one else knew we were up here,” I said. “No one else but Liam even knows this place exists.”
“Someone else obviously did,” Darius said, letting loose another cough. “Or someone tracked us.”
Ronan’s cough started up again, too, the sound making my own throat tickle.
Again, that strange sensation crept across my skin.
What is that smell?
I closed my eyes, trying to place it. It was faint, barely detectable even to me, but it was there, lingering just below the familiar scents of Gray and the guys and the home we now shared, like some kind of chemical tinged with magic.
I took a few more whiffs, opening my eyes and following the scent to its source.
Bingo.
I was standing over the coffee table, looking down at three black rocks, partially coated in what looked like swirls of red and bluish-gray paint.
I picked one up and brought it to my nose. Before I even took another whiff, I felt the burn in my nostrils and coughed.
“I’ve smelled something like this before,” I said. “Pretty sure it’s fae. What are these?”
“Asher brought them back from Gray’s house last night,” Ronan said. “After the fire. They were Sophie’s. She used to paint rocks from the Bay.”
Once he’d said it, I remembered seeing them in a basket on Gray’s kitchen table the night I’d gone over there to investigate Sophie’s murder.
The memory clawed a gouge in my heart.
“Well, that answers the question of why Jonathan set that fire,” I said. “He knew she’d want something from the house. These were the only things that didn’t burn, so he had them spelled.”
“With what?” Darius asked.
“I’m guessing a tracking device and some kind of time-release poison gas.”
Despite everything Fiona had told us, everything Gray believed about him dropping breadcrumbs, we’d still underestimated him.
“And you’re certain it’s fae magic?” Darius asked.
“Has to be,” Ronan said. “That’s the only way someone could’ve detected a signal from in here. Nothing else would’ve gotten through our fae magic.”
“Exactly. And once we were all unconscious,” I said, “it would’ve been easy for him to waltz right in he
re and take them.”
We all fell silent after that.
The bastard had come into our home. He’d put his hands on our friends. He’d taken them right out from under our noses.
“Fuck!” Ronan exploded in a ferocious roar, grabbing the rocks and whipping them at the window. They crashed through the glass, landing somewhere in the yard.
I crossed the room and put my hands on his shoulders, pulling him in for a hug. He was trembling with rage, his chest rattling from the last of the poison, all of it conspiring to wreak havoc on his system.
I met Darius’s eyes across the room, gesturing for him to get his vampire ass over here.
I pulled back from Ronan, holding his shoulders and looking him dead in the eye. “Listen to me, Ronan. We’ll get them back. I fucking promise you, we’ll get them back.”
“El Lobo is right.” Darius put a hand on each of our shoulders—a rare show of affection from the normally cool vampire. “Failure is not an option. Not when it comes to Gray and Asher.”
Ronan met his eyes, nodding once.
I pulled him in for one last hug, then left them alone, heading into my bedroom to gather up a few things.
When I returned, Darius was sweeping up the broken glass while Ronan taped cardboard over the windowpanes.
“Pack your shit, boys,” I said, dropping an empty duffel bag on the kitchen counter. “We’re going to Raven’s Cape.”
“You think he’s still there?” Ronan asked.
“Absolutely. He could’ve killed us last night, but he didn’t. He left us alive for a reason.” I grabbed a bunch of waters and some fruit from the fridge, shoving it all into the bag. “It’s a game to him, remember? Killing us would’ve end it. He wants us to go after him. He left the amulet on William Landes so when the time came, we’d know right where to look.”
“I suppose the time has come,” Darius said. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in the last ten minutes.
“You’re saying he wants a face-to-face?” Ronan said.
Another cough roared its way out of my chest. When I caught my breath again, I said, “No two ways about it.”
He scratched his thin beard, his eyes lost in thought.
When he looked up at me again, they were black as night.
“Then I say we give this motherfucker exactly what he wants.” Ronan’s wave of sadness and unchecked rage had receded, replaced now by an unwavering determination. The malevolent glint in those demon-black eyes set my teeth on edge, making me grateful we were on the same side. “And exactly what he deserves.”
Thirty
GRAY
“She’s probably dead,” a woman’s voice said, flat and defeated.
Panic shot through my limbs, making my hands and feet tingle. Dead? Was she talking about me?
I tried to open my eyes, to open my mouth to talk, to flex my fingers and toes, but I was completely paralyzed. The only thing I could feel other than the tingling in my limbs was the raw burn in my chest.
I wanted to cough, but I couldn’t get my lungs to work.
“You probably killed her,” she went on. “Just like you killed the other ones.”
Her voice seemed vaguely familiar. Where the hell was I?
“No.”
Rough hands gripped my shoulders, hauling me into a sitting position and shaking me hard.
Pain rushed at me all at once, forcing my eyelids open. I had just enough time to suck in a gasp of air before the grip released, dropping me on my back. I was lying on some kind of table, but everything was still blurry, the two figures before me no more than smudges.
Am I in a hospital? How long have I been unconscious?
“See?” the man said. “Not dead.”
He leaned down close, his head hovering over my face like a balloon as I tried to blink him into focus.
“Ronan?” I mumbled, though I already knew it couldn’t have been him. Ronan never would’ve touched me that way.
The cough finally worked its way out of my chest, leaving me breathless and sore.
When I finally stopped hacking, I looked at the man again, slowly bringing him into focus.
Dark red hair. Eyes the color of new spring grass.
And a smile that twisted like a knife in my gut.
“Afraid not, Sunshine.”
Thirty-One
GRAY
“Hello, Rayanne,” Jonathan said. “You look even better in person than you did in your realm. You’ve grown up to be more beautiful than I could’ve ever imagined.”
My skin crawled, bile rising in my throat as he grinned at me, his eyes wild with unchecked menace.
How many hours had I stared into those eyes? How many times had I run my fingers through that dark red hair, laughing about how much I envied it?
It was hard to believe I’d loved him so much.
Now, I just wanted to end him.
My eyes darted around the room, trying to get a sense for where I was. It wasn’t a hospital—that was for sure. The room was cold and damp, its stone walls rough and rounded, one side completely open to a corridor. There were no windows. The only light came from glass orbs lining the walls.
Somewhere in the distance, the ocean whispered against the shoreline.
I was in a cave on the coastline, just like I’d thought when I’d connected with Reva in the flames.
My heart quickened. If my vision had been correct, maybe the guys would figure out where I was. Maybe they’d put together all the rest of the clues and track me down. Maybe—
“I understand you might feel a little speechless,” Jonathan said, crashing into my thoughts. “Though I hope you change your mind about that. We have so much to catch up on! What has it been, ten years?”
When I didn’t respond, he turned to the woman behind him.
Fiona Brentwood bowed her head, her shoulders slumping.
Had she brought me here? Where were the guys? I thought Jonathan had somehow taken me from my realm last night, but if Fiona was here…
God, none of this made any sense. How did Jonathan even know she was at our house? How did he find me there?
“Ten years. Right, Feefs?” he said.
Fiona nodded, but she’d fallen silent, too.
I watched her a moment longer. I had no idea how either of us had come to be in his clutches, but one thing was certain: whether she still loved him or not, Fiona was not here of her own free will. Shame and fear rolled off her in waves, her body trembling. Every time he spoke, she jumped.
I tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at me.
“Rayanne, honestly.” Jonathan sighed, clearly getting annoyed at my lack of enthusiasm over our little reunion. “You can’t think of a single thing to say to me after a decade?”
When I find you, I will burn you…
“Why am I not dead?” I finally asked.
“Dead?” he looked positively aghast. “Why on earth… Wait, are you talking about all that unpleasantness at your mother’s house? Oh, Sunshine. I was young and spineless back then. Just following Daddy’s orders. But, you know, we all have to grow up and become our own people eventually.” He laughed, his wild eyes dancing. He was totally unhinged—a cartoon villain I just couldn’t seem to outsmart. “Like most men in his generation, my father lacks imagination and foresight. Fortunately for you, I have plenty of both.”
I blinked up at him, unsure what to say. Everything about him seemed to be hanging on by a very thin thread.
Behind him, Fiona remained as still as a statue.
His smile dropped. “Get up, Rayanne.”
“You can’t turn me,” I said, sitting up on the table and swinging my legs over the edge. I was still dressed in my clothes from last night, including my bra and underwear, which was a relief. But whatever Jonathan was planning, I didn’t want to be on my back when it happened. “Witches can’t survive the change.”
“Not yet,” he said. “But I’m working on perfecting the technique. Until then, I need something
else from you. Don’t look at me like that,” he said, swatting the air and rolling his eyes. “Do you honestly think I’d go to all the trouble of retrieving you if I was going to hurt you?”
“Where are the others?” I asked. “Haley, Reva—”
“Why do you care about those witches? We have everything we need now that you’re here.”
“Are they even… alive?” I whispered.
“That’s what you’re worried about?” He rolled his eyes. “Yes, they’re alive, Rayanne. Probably not at their personal best at the moment, given that they’re sleeping on wet rock and haven’t seen the sun in quite awhile, but they’re being fed and watered and you really have nothing to worry about there.”
“Can I see them?”
He pursed his lips. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not right now.”
I blew out a breath. It wasn’t much, but something told me he was telling the truth—that they were alive, and they were here. Which meant I might be able to find them and get us all out of here. I just had to keep playing along until I figured out what the hell to do.
I swayed in place, the edges of my vision dimming. I was hungry, and probably dehydrated, and doing my best to hold on to any shred of hope I could find.
“What do you want, Jonathan?” I finally asked.
He shrugged, as if he were simply asking for another glass of water or a dollar for the candy machine. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
Inside me, my magic stirred, humming faintly in my blood as if it had just awoken from a long nap.
He won’t touch us, the voice said.
I wanted to believe it. But how could I? How could I believe he wouldn’t touch me after everything he’d already taken from me?
“I already gave you absolutely everything I had,” I said, my voice breaking. “And you just… you led your father and his men to my house. You let them kill my mother. You tried to kill me.” At this, I finally met his gaze. “How could you?”
I swear I saw regret flicker through his crazy green eyes, but the instant I blinked, it was gone.
