Malik’s hold tightened. His hair was unkempt like he’d been running his fingers through it, his shirt buttoned incorrectly.
Blood rushed in my ears and my heart threatened to break free of my rib cage. I stared into his glittering eyes and saw death. So I did the only thing I could do: I kneed him in the balls as hard as I could.
Malik gasped a wheeze and dropped me.
Ignoring the red-hot agony blazing up from my injured ankle, I scramble-hopped back inside the door to our warded backyard, tripping safely behind it as Malik lunged.
He bounced off the invisible shield of the ward with a snarl. “Did you kill her?”
“I voided our deal.” Or I carried it out in grand style. I had no idea.
“Things not go as planned? Poor petal.”
My foot throbbed, I was exhausted, and yet, the waves of deadly hostility rolling off him only amped up my own fury. It didn’t matter that I’d gone to Malik to begin with: I wanted to savage him for putting me in Lilith’s path. For facilitating whatever the hell state my relationship was now in. “Get lost, demon.”
The marid nosed right up to the ward line. Only inches separated us. “You’ve got everyone poised to attack each other: your friends, the Brotherhood, witches, demons. There’s a war coming and you better be ready, petal, because I intend to survive it. And when I do?” He raked his fingers through his hair, smoothing it down, and smiled a polished smile. The one the wolf wore for the Three Little Pigs. “I’ll expand your lexicon with the true meaning of the word hurt.”
He portalled out.
I had no doubt that my day of reckoning was coming with him–with all of them–but right now there was only one person whose words meant anything.
I hopped my way into the kitchen and cornered Rohan. “Can we talk?”
He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and jumped up on the counter. “Go nuts.”
I tried, but dissolved into a coughing fit, still not at liberty to voice our deal. I swiped his water bottle, chugging it back, and wiped my mouth. “You go first. Last night.”
I toyed with the cap, a hollow pit opening in my stomach. I didn’t want to hear the details, since she’d probably rocked his world, but I couldn’t not know, either.
He studied me. “You really can’t say anything? Dr. Gelman wasn’t kidding.”
My head jerked up. “Dr. Gelman?”
“Nava, I figured there was something going on the second you restored my magic.”
“Oh.” I grabbed an industrial bottle of extra-strength ibuprophen and dry swallowed two before swiping a pack of frozen peas from the freezer. I sank into a chair, slipped off my shoes, and slapped the bag against my ankle. “I guess you wouldn’t have believed I could heal you.”
“I know you healed me once. I felt it when I was unconscious. It was the same honeyed warmth as when Rivka tried. But the second time? It was a sharp snap, more like an electric shock from all your magic at once. It was too much to believe you suddenly had the power to unravel the magic knot when Rivka didn’t know any witch strong enough.”
“So you called Gelman?”
“I did. She figured out what must have happened. Drio zipped over and picked up what I needed while you were in the shower.”
“Those smudgy candles and the world’s saltiest fish.” Now it made sense.
“We tried to pull Lilith out of you.” He rubbed his neck.
I may not have had the Word of the Day app anymore, but I was pretty solid on my grammar. Tried implied that an attempt had been made. The silence that followed implied it hadn’t gone well. “And?”
“She was too strong. Her hold on you was too deep. The best we could do was trap her unconscious inside you.”
I probed deep inside but I could feel no trace of her. That wasn’t a win. I’d rather have had a handle on her. Nothing. I had a ticking time bomb living in me with no idea what might trigger its explosion. It was terrifying, but it wasn’t the reason for my icy fingers and stuttery breath.
“When?” I mumbled, staring at my feet.
“What?”
I cleared my throat and met his gaze. “When did you knock her out?”
He crossed his arms, his eyes blazing, and his body rigid. “You want to know if I’d already fucked her? If last night I believed I was making love to my girlfriend and it had been like nothing I’d ever experienced? Will it ease your conscience if I enjoyed it?” He leered at me, lowering his face close to mine. “You were the best, baby.”
I slapped him.
The sound lingered over the gurgle of the dishwasher kicking in. Neither of us spoke, the air charged like the seconds before the eruption of a thunderstorm.
He rubbed his cheek. “How could you make that deal?”
Would the frozen peas work on my heart? “How could I not? You’d lost your magic.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I told you before that I didn’t need saving.”
“Really?” I adjusted the bag on my swollen ankle. “I saw you outside after you’d learned the bad news. You were devastated.”
“I’d have dealt.”
“Like you did with Asha?”
“You have no idea–”
“Drio told me.”
“Then how the hell could you betray me?” he said. “Basic concept, right from wrong. Even you understand that.”
Even me. I dug my nails into my palms. “I tried to keep things from playing out. I tried to spell it out with the fridge magnets and break up with you and–”
“And at the end of the day, you made that deal with whatever the fuck Lilith is, involving me, without my consent.” A literal brick wall springing up between us would have been easier to breech than his unyielding stance.
I reached for him, desperate for him to understand, but he stepped back.
Was it me or this thing inside me? I was too scared of his answer to ask.
“After Drio told me about Asha, and you were out there broken,” I said, “I understood wanting to do whatever it took to protect someone I cared about. I’d have done anything to help you. ‘If I have to be an asshole to save you, I’ll do it.’ Your words.”
“‘Then you’ll lose me.’” He jabbed a finger at me. “Your words.”
“Have I lost you?” I could barely croak out the words through the thickness in my throat.
At least with his anger, he’d still felt something toward me. Rohan standing here, hands hanging limply at his sides, his eyes closed, not answering? That was him giving up.
My skin tingled from the strain of holding in my sharp sorrow. It weighed me down in pieces: knotted behind my breastbone, pulsing in my temples, and pooling in my feet. Lilith didn’t rouse to gloat, though.
I pressed my fists to the side of my head. “Where do we go from here?”
“On which part?” He slumped over the counter, his back to me, his head braced in his hands.
“All of it. Is it…” I took a deep breath. “Are we over?”
His phone rang. Rohan glanced at the screen and answered it. “Hey Mom, this isn’t a good–” He straightened up. “What? When? Is he–?”
Concerned, I stood up, hissing when I put my weight on my foot. Ro’s expression softened in sympathy for a second before hardening once more. His gaze flicked away.
“Yeah,” he said on the phone, “I’ll get a flight today. Okay. Bye.”
I placed my hand on his arm and he flinched. My eyes watered. “What happened?”
“Dad had a heart attack.”
I opened my arms without thinking, immediately correcting to wrap them around my chest. If he’d flinched at my touch, I couldn’t take seeing what he’d do at the full body contact of a hug. I dug my fingers deeper into my ribcage, moving to the opposite side of the island to give him space, but no matter how hard I tried to keep myself upright and dignified, my body leaned toward his. “Is he all right?”
“He’s alive, but he’s in the hospital.” He clutched his phone, staring blankly at it.
Then he shook himself off and headed for the door. “I need to go home.”
When Rohan had sung me “Slay” he’d proclaimed that I was his home. The loss of status was numbing.
But I had my answer about us.
I pressed my hand against my mouth, but there was nothing I could do about the tears streaming down my cheeks.
He stopped in the doorway, his back still to me. “Nothing happened. With Lilith. I would never…”
“Okay.” I dragged in a shaky breath.
In three strides he was back at my side, kissing my wet lashes. With my eyes closed, I could pretend that his lips on my tears were in comfort, and that the nausea swirling in my stomach was giddy anticipation.
But I couldn’t keep my eyes shut forever, and when I opened them, I was hit full force with the cold vertigo of my splintered heart, his touch and warmth lost to me and the broken look on his face more devastating than all our words.
“This isn’t the end of us,” he said. “Just…”
I sniffled. “A break?”
A coffee break? A bone break? A heartbreak?
He rested his forehead on mine. “A slowing down. We kept saying we wanted each other desperate,” he said. “And as much as it had been a joke, it wasn’t. We can’t do that anymore. Can’t crave each other so much that it’s this all-consuming mess of fucked-up power dynamics and who gets to keep who safe and happy.”
“I know. And the harder we tried, the harder we trampled each other.” The problem hadn’t been making ourselves vulnerable, it had been accepting the times when the other person’s vulnerability was on the line.
I lay my hand on his cheek, wondering when he turned into it, his stubble scratching my palm and his eyes damp, if this would be my last memory of him.
Of us.
Rohan was right. We needed to slow down. I understood that intellectually. Emotionally, I was howling, laying bleeding and gutted on the floor, the ruins of what we’d had strewn around me in shattered disarray.
He stepped back and I mourned the loss of contact. “I’ll call you when I get there.”
I struggled for breath to form the correct, careful platitudes, gripping the counter behind my back to keep myself from going with him. No longer having any right to be his source of comfort. “I hope your dad gets better quickly.”
“Me too.” We held a look that wasn’t so much mutual recrimination as tragic acknowledgment.
Ro half-raised his hand in a wave and I nodded. All this time, I’d been so worried about Rohan and his bad behaviors, but it turned out that the real danger to our relationship had been me all along.
I didn’t watch him walk out the door.
Acknowledgments
Big thanks to Jessica Massey Golson for the “Karma” T-shirt gag. You nailed Nava on that one! I just have to say that my Wilde Ones Facebook group is the absolute best and I love (virtually) hanging out with you all.
To my daughter, Kiki, I owe you, kid, for always being willing to talk story with me, and for the smutty fridge magnet idea. You are my joy and my delight and I’m so proud to be your mom.
Alex Yuschik, are you getting tired of me raving about your editorial brilliance, yet? Because I’m not going to stop anytime soon. I owe you so much and I love working with you.
Much gratitude to my family, for supporting me in this crazy endeavor 150%.
To my readers, I have no words. (Okay, I lie. Here I go. Words.) You people are incredible and I am so glad that you love reading these books as much as I love writing them! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for choosing Team Nava.
Copyright © 2018 by Deborah Wilde.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Book Layout ©2015 BookDesignTemplates.com
Cover design by Damonza
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-988681-16-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-988681-17-7 (EPUB)
ISBN 978-1-988681-18-4 (Kindle)
ISBN: 978-1-988681-17-7
1
The five leaked song titles from Rohan’s upcoming album that I found on the fan boards were either A) written about me because Rohan wanted to publicly profess his forgiveness, B) not written about me because I was no longer lyric-worthy, or C) written about me but in a completely unflattering light.
“Silver Lining” was the first title I learned about. A case for either scenario “A” or “C” depending on whether I was the silver lining to the tragedies Rohan had faced in his life or I was the tragedy. And if it was the latter, what was this silver lining’s name? Because she and I were going to have words.
Next was “Tourniquet of Phrase,” which was just mean and suggested that he had to staunch the words that came out of my mouth. Another one for the “C” column.
“Rhapsody in You.” As the Magic 8 Ball that I’d had for all of three days as a kid before Ari had dissected it to prove it contained neither magic nor science would have decreed in favor of the “A” column, “All signs point to yes.”
Unless the “you” in the title wasn’t me.
Moving on.
“Asp.” Like the death snake that killed Cleopatra? Did he think I’d be the death of him? Seriously? I’d saved his sorry ass from a magicless life. In fact, I’d probably saved him from a reality in which he moved to the top of a mountain in a fit of emo pique, went off-grid, and eventually ended up with a peg leg because he sucked at gardening and couldn’t produce a single fruit or vegetable. The point was, I’d fixed things. Badly, perhaps, but he also wasn’t a legless mountain man, so there. And he calls me the asp?
And then there was the final leaked title. The title that no matter how I spun it, never left the worst-case column, and in fact added a subsection of “get ready to be dumped and hard.” “Age of Consent.” Because we all knew how he felt about consent.
I decided to take it from the top again and see if perhaps reading them for a seventh time changed anything when a strange noise caught my attention.
I slid my phone into my pocket and peered across the kitchen.
Ari Katz, my twin brother, was humming. Sure, sunshine streamed in through the open glass sliding door, the late July sky was a picture-perfect blue with fat pillowy clouds drifting lazily by, and the pop song streaming off Apple Music was pretty catchy. It would have been plausible, nay, likely even, that another blond guy would bob his head to Katy Perry and hum while doing dinner prep, but my brother? The guy who’d been tortured, liked weird art, and whose magic was the literal manifestation of darkness?
Not on your life.
I dumped more oil and balsamic dressing on the salad in the large wooden bowl that sat on the counter in front of me, pondering that Sherlock quote about eliminating the impossible blah-blah-blah to get to the truth.
And the truth’s denim-clad bubble ass was currently bent over in front of the fridge.
Kane Hashimoto elbowed the fridge door shut, holding by a pair of tongs a raw slab of T-bone that glistened with marinade.
“Do you have…” he glanced around. “A plate?”
“Because your meat is dripping?” Ari asked in a mild voice.
“If it was?” Kane popped a hand on his hip, a cocky smirk on his face.
This foreplay made no sense, since no one, and I mean no one, at Demon Club was getting laid. While Kane’s words sounded like
some kind of sexy challenge, his arrogance was belied by a look of light panic in his eyes. It seemed unlikely to stem from needing crockery.
Ari, to his credit and my astonishment, didn’t blush. He licked his lips. Slowly. Except again, less foreplay, more well, cheerful determination, like he was faced with a wild stallion he had to gentle and nothing was going to deter him from his path.
Kane broke out in a full-body blush: from his razor-sharp cheekbones, across his bare sculpted torso, and down into his waistband. He ducked his head; even his spiky black hair looked flustered.
My brother trained a fond expression on him and handed him a platter.
“That’s it.” I threw down the salad servers. “What is going on with you two? Because ever since you came back from that mission in Osoyoos, you’ve been all…” I circled my finger around at the two of them. “That.”
Kane transferred all three raw steaks from the marinade bowl onto the platter. “You need a life, babyslay.”
“We kill demons, remember? Lives are overrated. What I need is cold, hard information so I can stop driving myself crazy.”
Blue-gray eyes met dark brown as Ari and Kane shared a look.
“When’s the last time you spoke to Rohan?” Ari said.
I thunked the salad bowl into my brother’s chest, making his faded green T-shirt ripple. “Salt this. And don’t deflect.”
“There’s nothing going on.” Kane tossed the words out over his shoulder, oh-so-cavalierly, and stepped outside. He had the platter in one hand and the BBQ tongs in the other.
Ari shrugged and tossed a dash of salt onto our salad. “You heard the man.”
If I had a twin sister, I’d have had the details ages ago. No matter. I’d break him.
“If you two are dating, then tell me. Don’t pretend it’s not happening out of some kind of misplaced pity. Don’t want it. Don’t need it.”
Ari set the bowl on the dark granite counter next to the forks and plates I’d already gotten out, then plucked Ro’s favorite purple guitar pick from between my fingers. I blinked, surprised to find that I’d fished it out of the front pocket of my shorts and had been rubbing it like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
Nava Katz Box Set 2 Page 30
