Before the three of us could knock on the door, Ms. Beverly swung it open. She peeked out and eyed those of us approaching her, but also everyone we’d left at the vehicles.
“You’ve brought an army with you, I see.” She pushed her front door open further, insinuating we should come inside. “Good. You’re gonna need it.”
The sharp scent of something familiar hit my nose as I stepped into her cozy cabin, but I couldn’t make out what it was. It made unease uncoil in my stomach. While I’d always loved coming here when I was younger, it was giving me the creeps now. An ominous vibe reverberated through it.
I’d spent two summers in Ms. Beverly’s care before my parents passed away. She’d watched Reese and me each day. I always joked it was like a werewolf summer camp being here. There was always something to do—crafts, baking, new plants to tend to in the garden, campfires, and stories. I always had a blast.
But right now, something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on what.
Ms. Beverly closed the door behind us harder than necessary, causing me to jump. Her hand reached out and gripped my wrist.
“Sorry, dear.” She smiled. “The wind got a hold of it.”
“What’s that smell?” Anna inhaled deeply.
“Ginger and honey. Good for my arthritis,” Ms. Beverly answered.
Ginger. That was what the sharp scent was. Something shifted in my mind and my stomach dropped to my toes as an image of the tattooed woman who had attacked me flashed through my mind. There had been a similar scent about her, hadn’t there? The thought of her having arthritis and drinking ginger tea grazed the surface of my mind, but I couldn’t get the image to stick. The idea of the crazy lady doing anything as mundane as drinking a mug of tea seemed farfetched.
“What did you want to see us about?” Jasper asked. While his tone wasn’t as snippy or irritated as I knew he felt for having to stop here, it still held a bite to it. “We’re sort of in a hurry to get on the road.”
“You think I don’t know that?” The old woman arched a brow at him. The simple gesture put my racing heart and knotted stomach at ease. There was something comforting about her sassy attitude, something normal. “Have a seat, and I’ll go get what I wanted to give you.” She motioned to the pea green sofa and love seat a few feet away, accidentally scratching me with one of her long fingernails in the process. She shot me a sympathetic smile before making her way down the hall.
The three of us migrated to the furniture while Ms. Beverly headed to the back of the house. Anna was the first to sit on the love seat. She inhaled heavily as she situated herself.
“I love that scent,” she said, closing her eyes as though it was heavenly.
Jasper sat beside her, but something about his expression gave me pause. “What is it?” I asked. The same sensation from earlier lapped at my insides. Something wasn’t right, and I thought Jasper might be feeling it too.
“How is the house so fragrant with that tea when I don’t see a mug anywhere?” he asked.
Anna waved his words away. “Maybe there’s a kettle of it on the stove keeping warm. Why are you so paranoid all the sudden?”
I moved to sit on the sofa, eyeing the living room. While everything looked as though I’d always remembered it, there was something out of the ordinary I couldn’t place.
“Considering everything that’s happened the last few days, I’m allowed to be paranoid,” Jasper insisted. I noticed his eyes had shifted to mine to get his point across better, but I didn’t acknowledge it.
“Right, sorry.” Anna leaned back against the love seat and folded her arms over her chest.
“What’s taking so long?” Jasper demanded. His right knee bounced with his pent-up tension.
“I’m rubbing some lavender oil on your wrists and behind your ears when we get back to your truck,” Anna said. “You’re too agitated for me to be trapped in a vehicle with you for eleven hours having that type of attitude.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Jasper announced. “Lavender oil smells like ass.”
I opened my mouth to say something about choosing between acting like one and smelling like one when my eyes landed on something across the kitchen floor. My breath caught in my throat as I stared at the unmoving fingers of someone.
Chapter 14
At first I couldn’t find my voice. I stared at the fingers, which appeared to be still attached to a hand, unable to fully comprehend what I was seeing. A twisting in my gut had let me know something wasn’t right the second I’d stepped foot inside the house, but I never would have imagined it would have been a body lying on Ms. Beverly’s kitchen floor.
“There’s someone on the kitchen floor.” My voice was soft and weak as I pointed in its direction. I didn’t want Ms. Beverly to know what I’d seen by hearing me with her werewolf hearing.
“What?” Jasper leaned forward, putting his line of view level with mine. He exhaled a long breath once he spotted what I was talking about. “Great. If this was all a ploy to get us here so I’d perform a cloaking spell to help hide the fact she let her wolf side run wild and kill someone, I’m going to be pissed.”
My teeth sank into my bottom lip as I watched Jasper walk toward something my gut was telling me we should run from.
“Don’t judge until you know the whole story,” Anna whispered. She shifted around on the love seat in an attempt to get a closer look at the body without getting up.
“Holy shit,” Jasper said the second he rounded the kitchen corner. He spun to face me in a motion so fast my eyes barely registered the movement. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
A second after the words had fallen from my brother’s lips, a shrill shriek like that of a battle cry surged through the house. My hands went to cover my ears as I squeezed my eyes shut, having been taken by surprise. Something heavy fell from the ceiling. It landed on me, sending me forward and crashing into the coffee table. My forehead hit the solid wood, and stars danced before my vision as nausea broke out in my stomach. Chaos erupted around me as I struggled to figure out what was happening. Something heavy was on me, that much I knew.
I attempted to push myself up, but whatever was on me still held me down with its weight. Shifting around, I was able to see what it was. Better yet, who.
Ms. Beverly resembled a rabid animal. Part of her was pinning me down, while the other rested on the sofa. The crazed look in her eyes sent fear spiraling through me. What the hell was wrong with her? I didn’t understand why she’d jumped on me, but knew it had everything to do with whoever or whatever Jasper had seen in the kitchen. At the thought of him, my eyes sought out my brother. He was standing a few feet away from me with his hands outstretched in front of him in a form of surrender. His brows had pinched together, making him appear as though he were taking the situation in from all angles before deciding on his next move. I struggled to do the same, but couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact Ms. Beverly had sidelined me.
“I thought I would have more time,” Ms. Beverly said, only her voice didn’t sound like hers at all. While it was familiar, I couldn’t place it. A pulse of pain from my forehead thumping in sync with my heart made it difficult to focus on much else. “There was something special I was planning to concoct with the sliver of skin I got from this little troublemaker earlier, but I guess I’ve been forced to change my plans.”
Sliver of skin? I thought back to how she’d scratched me by accident when we first arrived. Apparently, it hadn’t been an accident. My stomach swirled as the situation looped through my mind.
“Plan B,” Ms. Beverly said in the voice that wasn’t hers, reminding me this couldn’t be the same woman I knew and loved.
This was someone else. It had to be. Her fingers snaked into my hair, pulling it until it was taut with my scalp, and I had no choice except to expose my neck to her. I caught sight of something silver and shiny glinting in the light above us just before the feel of something cool and sharp pressed against the base of my throat. My gut tol
d me it was a knife before the gasp of shock from Anna made its way to my ears confirming my theory.
“Don’t do this,” Jasper insisted in a firm voice. My eyes shifted to him, taking in his slow, controlled steps toward me.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Ms. Beverly hissed. The sharp edge of the knife dug deeper into my throat, penetrating my delicate skin with ease.
My heart pounded as I struggled not to swallow the large amount of saliva pooling in my mouth, fearing one wrong movement might end my life. I couldn’t die. Not now. Not at the hands of Ms. Beverly. And not while I had vampire blood still pumping through my system. There was no way I was becoming a vampire. Jasper had better figure out how to get this old woman off me.
Slight movement from Anna caught my attention. While I didn’t know what she was doing, I hoped it was something to help. The familiar scent of ginger wafted to my nose, and I realized with a certainty this wasn’t Ms. Beverly. It couldn’t be.
“Who are you?” I asked.
A sharp cackle escaped the old woman. “I guess there’s no harm in revealing myself now. After all, it isn’t as though you haven’t seen me before.”
My stomach churned as I strained to see her face, waiting for whatever was about to happen. In my mind, I imagined the face of Ms. Beverly melting away to reveal someone else, but that wasn’t how it happened. Instead, the old woman held one hand up to cover her face and then slowly slid it down to show us who she really was. In a matter of seconds, we were no longer staring at old Ms. Beverly, but instead at the crazy tattooed woman who’d attacked me before.
I couldn’t breathe. How she had found me again and managed to set up this elaborate plan was beyond my comprehension. How had she known we were headed here? We’d taken away the Vodun’s eyes on us…hadn’t we?
“How are you here?” I asked.
She glanced at me, her eyes twisting with so much hatred for me it took my breath away. “Does it matter?”
I didn’t have time to answer, because Anna and Jasper jumped into action, having the crazed woman’s attention broken for a split-second. Anna had clamped her hands together to form a fist and sent them across the back of the woman’s head with as much force as she could muster, and Jasper had launched from where he’d stood to place one of the many cloaks he’d strapped to his body on her.
She didn’t have a chance against either of them. She was crashing into me, unconscious, before I was able to compute what had happened. Her weight pinned me down again, and I felt myself crumble on top of my left arm, bending the wrist in a way that sent pain shooting up my arm and into my elbow. A bloodcurdling scream spurred from between my lips, causing the front door to be swept open and all hell to break out once more inside the log cabin.
Too many voices clogged my ears as the others from outside burst into the room demanding to know what had happened. Tristan rushed to me, opting to help Jasper peel the crazy woman off me as carefully as they could. Pain stabbed through my wrist from the movement regardless.
“What the heck is she doing here?” Tristan asked, taking note of who the woman was.
“Assassinating Piper.” Liam was quick to put together.
“Again,” Jasper spat.
“How could this have happened? We’ve been so careful,” Meili said. There was a level of confusion in her tone I was positive everyone was feeling.
“None of that matters,” Anna insisted. “All that matters is Piper is okay. We all are.”
“This woman works for the Vodun,” one of Meili’s guys said. He was staring at the woman with recognition. “Their mark is branded on her neck.”
“Their mark?” Tristan asked. “The bird?”
The guy nodded. “Yes. The raven is their symbol.”
“That would explain all the dead ravens and the one Ms. Beverly stopped from watching you two,” Anna announced as though she’d just put two and two together.
Ravens. Crows. Black birds. Whatever they were, I didn’t care to see another for as long as I lived. I didn’t care to have another run in with this woman either. The second she was pulled off me, I inched my way out from beneath her. The discomfort in my wrist brought tears to my eyes, but I blinked them away. My vision grew hazy with all my movement, which I knew was because of the knot forming on my forehead. It had to be the size of a grapefruit by now. I could feel my heart beating in it as though it were an entity of its own. Anna bent to help me to my feet.
“What should we do with her?” the other guy Meili brought with her asked. He wasn’t asking in general; his eyes were trained on Meili only.
“Kill her,” Meili said flatly. The fact there wasn’t a speck of hesitation in her voice sent shivers along my spine. It was another reminder these people were desperate to gain their abilities back and were fed up with the Vodun.
“I agree,” Jasper insisted. My eyes drifted to my brother. Pure determination and raw hatred swirled within the brown color of his eyes. “She’s attempted to kill my sister twice. She deserves to die.”
I watched as he stepped forward to retrieve the knife that had been used against me twice now. It fit in his hand as though it was made to be there, but it didn’t suit him. It looked evil and sinister in my brother’s hand, making the dark of his eyes appear more prominent. It caused his features to sharpen and his lips to purse together. I wondered if there was power in the dagger, if it coursed through him, propelling his thoughts of murder. The woman had seemed crazed, and even though I couldn’t be sure, being possessed by a dagger didn’t seem impossible. After all, this was the supernatural world we were dealing with.
“She killed Ms. Beverly too,” Jasper growled. His eyes bored into the woman. I half expected her to burst into flames from the heat of his gaze. “Piper, look away.”
I did as I was told.
The squishy sound of the knife impaling her made its way to my ears, and I knew Jasper had stabbed her in the heart.
“You should call Reese and let her know what’s happened.” Jasper’s voice boomed through the silence of the house. His heavy boot falls came next. “And then we should go.”
I avoided looking at the tattooed woman, instead choosing to focus on my brother in his stalk through the house. He paused at the tiny circular table I’d eaten so many meals at as a small girl and snatched up the vase of yellow flowers. I stared at his back as he continued toward the kitchen, knowing what he was planning to do. Shaking Anna’s firm grip on me off and avoiding the crumbled frame of my assassinator, I followed after my brother.
When I entered the kitchen, my eyes grazed over the broken and mangled body of the woman who’d cared for me two summers in a row, the woman who, during that time, had become a grandmother to me as well, and I felt the first tears of the night slip free from my eyes. Jasper pulled the bouquet of flowers from the vase and set it on the counter. He split it in half and handed me my portion. I took them with trembling fingers.
“You will be missed,” he said as he bent to lay flowers across her chest.
Holding my breath, I bent at the waist and did the same. “You were loved,” I whispered only for her.
Swallowing hard, I forced myself back to standing and noticed everyone else had gathered behind us. Their heads were bowed in a moment of silence and recognition for the life lost.
Anna maneuvered her way between them, clasping a shawl from the living room between her hands. She wept as she stepped forward and covered the body of Ms. Beverly. “The world of witches will be darker because of your absence.”
She was right. Everything felt different. Off. As though Ms. Beverly’s death wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t woven into the fabric of time and destiny. Her death had happened too soon. I wondered if this was how I’d felt when I learned our parents were gone, if this is what it would feel like every time I lost someone.
I hated this feeling.
“Call Reese. Let her know,” Jasper insisted again.
My stomach lurched to my throat, a sensation I ha
ted even more. No one ever wanted to call someone to inform them of the death of a loved one. Unfortunately, sometimes in life we were forced to, because death was inevitable for those of us who weren’t bloodsucking vampires.
Chapter 15
I lay in the backseat of Jasper’s truck, molded into the contour of Tristan’s side with my hurt wrist bandaged and squeezed to my chest as I replayed the conversation with Reese in my head. She hadn’t taken the death of her grandmother well. She wasn’t angry or upset with me for having been the one to tell her, but I almost wished she had been. It would have been justified. Heck, her being pissed at me for bringing death upon her grandmother would have been justified. After all, that was what I’d done.
Ms. Beverly would still be alive if it weren’t for the Vodun being after me.
I chewed my bottom lip while contemplating where all of this began. It went back further than agreeing to help Tristan and his tribe regain their abilities. My brows furrowed as I realized it all started with my crush on him. I never would have let him close, never would have let him get to me the way he did, if I hadn’t formed a crush on him.
Why did he have to be so attractive? Why couldn’t I have thought he was strange and off like everyone else?
“You okay?” Tristan whispered against my hair.
“Yeah,” I lied.
“You sure?”
“I’m fine.”
He squeezed my hand. “It’s okay if you’re not, you know.”
“I know,” I said, realizing then there was no way I would have been able to avoid him or my feelings for him. It would be pointless to even fantasize about it.
I buried my head into the crook of his neck and listened to the low humming of a familiar song play through the speakers of my brother’s truck. A few miles later, I gave in to the heaviness of my eyelids and slipped into a deep sleep.
Nightmares of birds and the crazy woman plagued me. In my dream, I was still back at Ms. Beverly’s log cabin. Darkness had swallowed the entire place, making it nearly impossible to see my hand in front of my face. The obscurity surrounding me seemed to stem from the tattooed woman working for the Vodun. She was creating it somehow. I could sense it. It felt almost as though it were an extension of her, making it possible for her to watch me but me unable to see her. When I stumbled into what I thought was the kitchen, searching for something to protect myself with, I nearly tripped over a form lying on the floor.
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