Midnight Coven (Devil's Roses Book 7) (The Devil's Roses)

by Tara Brown

  My red boots fill my view when I look down the mountain pass. They bring a smile to my lips every time I put them on, sisterhood of the bloody boots. . . . Damn, I miss her. I miss them. All of them.

  I pull it out, even though I’ve told myself a hundred times not to. It’s wrong morally, and creepy on a whole level I don’t like to think about. Sniffing my mom’s things in a zippy bag was one kind of crazy, running a feather from a dead guy across my lips is another. But I don't care.

  When it touches my lips, and I close my eyes, I swear I can feel him. I swear I can hear his accent and see his obsidian eyes. I can smell that sweet musk and I taste the kisses we shared.

  I look at the white feather and hate myself.

  I don't know how—how he did it. How he made me hate him and loved me so much. It hurts in places I can’t name inside of me.

  The wind rustles around me and Blake is there. He sighs when he sits next to me. “She’s working in a coffee house. Five months at the same place. You know what that means?”

  I shrug. “That she has broken her previous record of maintaining a job at one place. I believe the record was the summer we were fifteen. Mom made her get a job at the ice cream shack on the wharf. That was five weeks, wasn’t it?”

  He gives me a look. “It means we’ve been this—” He looks down at his hands and mutters, “For seventeen months.”

  “No way.”

  The forlorn look on his face tells me it truly has been seventeen months. I look back at the desert. “Well, that means you’ve been watching her from the shadows for fifteen months then. That’s got to be a record, right?”

  “Please,” he scoffs. “I wish. Longest time spent Alise watching to date is all of 2006 up until 2012. This fifteen months is paltry in comparison.”

  “That's freaky, I can’t even lie.” I run my fingers over the feather.

  “Freaky is that feather. If someone plucked one of my feathers I don't know how I would react but keeping it and stroking it would scare me on a whole other level.” Blake’s the only one who knows the story of Dorian. He glances down on it. “It’s just too creepy that it used to be part of his wings. Is a white feather like a grey hair?”

  It makes me laugh. “I don’t know. He only had one.”

  “You miss him? The impossibly rude and completely untrustworthy Dorian?”

  I turn and look into his eyes. “You never saw it. It was every single angle of my face, every tear I’ve cried, every-everything. He saw it all. He was watching me and I never even knew. Before my mom died, Dorian was watching me.”

  “That’s creepy. Mr. Mac was watching girls too.”

  I laugh harder, shoving him. “No, Dorian was watching over me. He made sure I was safe, always. He was always there. I never knew.”

  “Still creepy.”

  “Duly noted.” There is no argument on the creepiness. “I have become the chick in the movie I hate. The girl who has the super-sweet guy who loves her more than anything and only wants to be with her and has never hurt her and has forgiven everything. But she wants to be with the dead guy who was a complete psycho stalker.” I drop my head. “I know.”

  He chuckles. “You like the bad boy.”

  “He’s conflicted. He isn’t bad. He has issues and baggage.”

  Blake rolls his eyes. “Oh wow. He only hits me because he loves me, huh?”

  “Okay, you’re the one who took it there.” I give him the look.

  He nudges me. “I was kidding. I know he wouldn’t ever hit you.”

  I look back out over the desert. “The funny thing is now when I think about him, every action that before was horrid is now sweet and passionate.” I look back at him. “Shit, I AM one of those girls.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “Firstly, you’re badass and you know it. So if he did hit you, you would cripple him for life. Secondly, he’s dead. You don’t have to choose between him and Aleks. So it’s cool to crush on the guy who no one got but you. Oh, and your boyfriend. Since they were besties and all.”

  “Your vocabulary is starting to take some damage from stalking Alise.”

  “That was offside.” He points. “Mean spirited and only shows I nicked your soul with that last comment.”

  “If I had a soul.”

  His eyes grow concerned. “You do. We all do. There is no way I am soulless after everything we have been through.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m detaching. Getting cold.”

  He laughs. “Trust me, this isn’t a new look for you. You’ve always been cold, now you just like to talk with your hands.”

  “Whatever.”

  He laughs. “Who’s stealing lines from Alise now?”

  I make a W with my hands and use her favorite one. “WHATEVER!”

  “As much as I’m officially ashamed of you, that made me miss her.” He nestles into me and we sit in silence. The desert is busy. Trucks, camels, and people are everywhere it seems. The blood bank of doom is up and running hard core again. We shut it down two weeks ago and now it’s back to fully functioning.

  “As soon as Ari gets here, we go in.”

  He nods and starts playing in the sand dune, running his fingers through it, finding the odd stone. He tosses one in his hands, as if testing the weight of it. “Do you think we’ll ever be done with this? Like it’ll go back to normal one day?” He tosses the stone and we both watch as it sails across the desert, hitting a car at least two miles away. The car skids to a stop and several men get out, looking around. One guy shoves the other.

  I chuckle at the debacle below us. “No.”

  “Shit, that was like a bullet.”

  “Yup. Maybe shooting at them before we ambush is a bad plan.”

  The whole thing would be a lot funnier if we weren’t just sitting and missing people we couldn't have. I have noticed neither of us has been laughing about much lately. The odd chuckle or smile is all any one does anymore. There is no joy. I don't know where it went.

  The warm, dry air swirls around us, and she’s there, standing in front of me, but I would swear I don’t even know her anymore.

  Ari winks at me. “Let’s do this.” She’s cocky and full of herself almost. She turns and looks at the houses below as Blake leans into me and whispers, “She seem more like Dorian lately?”

  I nudge him.

  “Is this the place from two weeks ago?” She points at the house. “We’ve been here before, right? I’m not crazy.”

  Blake rolls his eyes. “You’re crazy either way.”

  Ari looks at him with dark daggers and mutters in a tone I have never heard her use before, “Don’t make me beat you around this desert.”

  He opens his mouth but I stand up and get between them. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Ari cocks an eyebrow at us both. “You two are in shit moods today. What’s your deal?”

  I shake my head, pocketing the feather. “No deal. Just ready to end these assholes and go home.”

  “They seem to be popping up everywhere. The whole blood bag thing is getting out of hand.” She nods suddenly calm again. Weird.

  “The whole ‘evil will reign the world for seven years’ thing is kind of helping them out,” Blake says as he stands.

  “I do get the simple science behind it all.” She nods. “I know. I’m just saying it’s crazy how they are everywhere we look.”

  “Prophecy, not science,” he adds.

  She looks annoyed again.

  I wink to the house at the far corner of the compound and take a picture with my cell phone. I text it to them and they both wink to me instantly.

  Ari laughs. “Let the blood bath begin.”

  “Again.”

  Coming June 2014

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