“Hey, Cat!” Cass waved me over. “Robbie and Mara made it!”
“I see that.” I smiled in their direction. “I should go say hi. Lily, want to come?”
She nodded eagerly.
When I reached them, Robbie enfolded me in a bone-crushing hug. “If it isn’t my favorite feline.”
“Shut up,” I said, but smiled.
Robbie had been Blake’s best friend, but we hadn’t hung out much as kids because he was always studying, which won him a free ride at an Ivy League.
He extended his hand toward Lily. “I heard we had a celebrity in our midst. Pleasure to meet you.”
Lily shook his freckled hand.
Two guys I didn’t know pushed their way over to us at the mention of celebrity. “I told you it was Lily Wood,” one of them told the other. And then he tried to put his arm around her shoulder. I shoved him so hard, he toppled over. Jaw as red as Cass’s new leather pants, he shot back up to his feet. “She your lesbian lover or what?”
“I don’t share with my sister. That would be wrong on so many levels.”
I snapped my neck toward Ace, who stood so close to the bonfire, it seemed like the flames were seeping out of his skin. He strolled over to us and draped an arm around my shoulders, and even though I needed to push that arm off, remind him that I wasn’t his, I let him hold me long enough to prove his point.
As soon as the sleaze-ball retreated with his slimy friend, I ducked out from under Ace’s arm.
“Who were those assholes?” Ace asked.
“Guys I met at a club,” Cass mumbled. “Probably shouldn’t have invited them.
“You okay, Cat?” Ace’s gaze roamed over me.
“They hit on your sister, not on me.”
His blue gaze danced in the flames.
My heart pitched. “Did Cass invite you or did you invite yourself?” I made sure my voice was as dry as sand.
A muscle leaped in Ace’s jaw. “People usually have to pay a fortune for me to make an appearance at their party, but tonight I stopped by for free.” He smiled, and it was so frosty, it flicked all the warmth from my body. “Don’t get your thong in a twist, Cat. I’m not staying. I just came to check up on Little Sis, and then I’ll flit back away.” He flapped his hands at his side.
When I’d first met Ace, he’d been arrogant and standoffish, but never hateful. The way he looked at me now…it was so filled with hate that I backed up. I would’ve run away had I not spotted shimmering flecks in the distance. Kajika and Alice were already prowling toward them. I took off after the hunters, not to join their ranks, but to hold them back.
“Kajika!” I called out to catch his attention.
The hunter stopped. Turned. Waited. “What are golwinim doing here?”
“I have no fucking clue,” Ace growled back. He stood right behind me.
“You didn’t come with them?” I asked.
“Do I look like I need bodyguards?” There was a serrated edge to his tone that sliced right into me.
Lily put a hand on her brother’s arm as two of the fireflies morphed into men with gleaming gold eyes. Their skin, like Ace and Lily’s, glowed in the moonlight. But it was the only part of their body that blazed since their black-clad bodies melted into the darkness of the beach.
“Silas?” Ace said.
“Ace.” The golwinim I imagined was Silas inclined his head toward Ace. “The hunters hold one of ours. We came to request his immediate release.”
“The pahan is lying,” Kajika shot back.
“Unlike your people, I don’t lie, ventor,” the second guard growled.
Kajika lunged for him, but the guard, whose feet weren’t anchored to the ground, shot away.
“Kajika, don’t,” I yelled. “Not here.” I looked back at the bonfire and the human bodies around it. We were much farther than I’d originally thought, but still too close.
“They insult me, Catori. I do not lie.”
I touched his back. “I believe you.”
“Who do the hunters have?” Ace’s eyes dipped to the spot of skin I’d touched.
“Pietro,” Silas answered.
Ace’s gaze jerked up to the guard’s, face paling. “The hunters took him?”
“We followed his trail until we could no longer follow it. They have him in the house, but there is too much iron to step inside.”
“I was just in my house. We hold no faerie inside,” Kajika volleyed back, temper flaring.
“We do.” The disembodied voice belonged to Alice. “I mean we did. He’s no longer there.”
Kajika’s shoulder blades strained so precipitously they seemed about to snap off. “You took a golwinim prisoner?”
“He’s the fae who killed Tom.”
“Why was I not informed of this apprehension?”
“Because you’re too soft on faeries.”
Kajika’s fingers curled into fists. “That is untrue.”
“Then why are you always hanging out with her?” Alice’s gaze set on me. “She’s part faerie, isn’t she?”
I felt Lily look at me then, but I didn’t dare let the huntress out of my sight.
“You are all fools! Our people do not punish pahans by kidnapping them,” Kajika hissed, and Alice took a step back. “We strip them of their gassen. Lead me to him, Alice.”
Silas said, “I will follow.”
“No you won’t,” Alice snarled. “Besides, we’re not releasing him, so fuck off.”
“Your hunter died of his own fault. He attacked Pietro with arrows. Wounded him.” It was Silas who answered.
More golwinim took human shape and crowded around us.
“Even though I was not aware of the capture, the golwinim was spying on the cemetery,” Kajika explained. “Many times, I caught him circling Catori’s house.”
“What?” I gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He was following orders,” Silas answered. “He had no intent to harm her.”
“Whose orders?” I asked.
The guard’s golden gaze surfed straight toward Ace’s face.
I spun around. “You had someone spy on me?”
Ace folded his arms.
“Since when?” I repeated, advancing toward him. I was about to punch his chest, not hard, but hard enough to drive in the message that I did not appreciate being spied on.
Ace gripped my wrists and held them away from his body. “Calm down.”
“Calm down?” I tried to swing my fists, but his fingers were a vice. “Let go!”
“Or what?”
Anger welled behind my breastbone and flooded my body.
“You’re going to spear me with one of your little rowan wood arrows?” Steam hissed between Ace’s clenched fingers, curling into the night.
Kajika must’ve assumed it was smoke, that Ace was setting me on fire, because he moved toward us with the ferocity of a wild animal. Instead of loosening his hold on me, Ace spun me around and pinned his arms around my torso, before shooting upward, too high for Kajika to reach, but low enough that we could still hear the hunter’s growl and see the slender wooden stick aimed toward Ace. Kajika had no bow, but I didn’t doubt he could launch it powerfully enough to reach Ace.
“No!” I cried out.
Kajika loosed the arrow. Ace soared sideways. The arrow whispered past us, then plummeted into the dark lake beneath our hovering feet. The next moment, the guards pounced on Kajika.
“It’s not what you think.” Ace’s breath was hot against the nape of my neck.
“Tell them not to hurt him!” I yelled.
“Why can’t you care as much about me as you do about Kajika?”
“Ace, call them off before they kill him, or I swear I’ll—”
Ace flipped me over. “You swear what? That you’ll kill me?”
I glared at him, my hair flogging my face and his like a whip. “I will never forgive you if they hurt him. Never.”
Ace’s pupils throbbed wildly, fiercely. The next
second, he dove toward the beach. I shut my eyes, sure that we were about to crash, but the impact was soft. Ace released me inches off the ground. When I pressed up, my cheeks, palms, and knees were coated in sand. My feet slipped as I raced toward Kajika, who sat, arms scraped and leaking blood. The guards were gone. Only Lily, Alice, and Ace remained.
Rage roared inside my ears, as loud as a crashing wave. “What did they do to you?” I yelled, collapsing onto my knees and taking the hunter’s arm.
Seconds later, screams erupted down the beach from us. My pulse pounded as I looked toward Cass’s party, certain the golwinim had attacked them, but it wasn’t the golwinim who’d attacked.
It was me.
22
The Connection
A wave hit the bonfire so hard the flames fizzled out. Gray smoke rose from the pile of wet sticks. The lake recalled its foamy waters, preparing another powerful roll.
People screeched, but they also laughed. Some began whipping off their sodden T-shirts and wringing them out. This time, when the wave struck them, they body-checked the cold water with eager squeals. The lake pulled away again, bloated again, spilled again. I wanted to yell at them to get out of the water, but couldn’t get my mouth to work.
A hand touched my shoulder. Lily. She stared down at me, lips pressed together, head shaking. She squeezed my cold skin.
Keeping my gaze affixed to hers, I inhaled, exhaled, concentrating on evening my labored breaths, flattening my thunderous pulse. Slowly…slowly, the lake calmed. Soon its moon-lacquered surface barely rippled.
“What the hell was that freak storm?” Alice’s squinty eyes were on the lake.
No one answered her, but I could feel the weight of Ace’s stare. Kajika was in too much pain to look at me. He probably hadn’t even realized what was happening around him.
“Show me your arm,” I said.
But he kept it away. “It is healing.”
The blood had stopped oozing. The same way I’d healed back in Ruddington when the faerie had singed my hand, Kajika’s skin knitted back together. Soon the faerie guards’ slashes were mere pale lines. And then they were gone. And yet Kajika kept nursing his arm.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, trying to displace his fingers.
His feral eyes glowed almost red in the darkness, but his glare wasn’t directed at me.
It was directed at Lily.
She backed away.
As I stood on legs that felt like cotton candy, Kajika growled, “For my protection?”
Ace came to stand between the hunter and his sister. “What happened?”
“She marked me, that is what happened!” Kajika released his wrist, which glowed with a W.
Lily curled her pale fingers to stanch the glow radiating from her palm.
“Stop saying it is for my protection! You pahans do nothing for others. Everything you do, you do it for yourselves.”
I frowned. “No one’s saying it’s for your protection.”
“Lily—” Kajika started but stopped speaking.
My gaze swung between the faerie and the hunter. Was Lily signing to him? Did Kajika understand sign language?
Lily’s hands were firmly planted by her thighs.
Silent words shivered in the black air, accompanied by heavy stares.
“What the hell’s going on? And more importantly, where are your little fireflies?” Alice asked.
“I sent them home,” Ace said.
“I hope you told them not to show their rotten faces around Rowan again,” Alice spat. “If they care to keep their rotten faces, that is.”
“Give me Pietro, and I will tell them to keep their distance.”
Alice shook her head, her boy-short hair fluttering around her face.
“Take me to him, then.” Ace’s stance was so rigid he resembled a marble statue.
“I do not answer to pahans.”
“Kajika, tell your little huntress friend to release my man, or skies help me, I will tell the lucionaga it’s open season on hunters.”
Kajika didn’t even seem to be listening. He kept staring at Lily, whose eyes had grown as wide as the moon.
My forehead grooved as he rose, as he took a step toward the faerie who cowered behind her brother.
“Don’t you dare touch my sister,” Ace growled.
“Remove your mark.” Kajika squeezed his palms over his ears. “Remove your mark before I go crazy!”
“It can’t be removed, Kajika.” I looked at Ace. “I tried.”
Ace held my gaze a second, but then looked away, jaw set in an inflexible line.
Kajika pressed his eyes shut so hard his entire face rumpled. “What have you done to me?”
Fear was stamped all over Lily’s face.
“Stop it, Kajika. Stop yelling at her,” I said.
“You do not understand what she has done!”
“Yes, I do. I’m marked too.” I showed him my hand in case he’d forgotten. The brand wasn’t flaring, though—for once.
“It is not the same.” He backed away, but stopped suddenly. “Or is it?”
I frowned, not understanding his question.
Like rubber bands, his eyes snapped to Lily’s, before shutting again. He made a sound like an animal in pain and then took off running down the beach. When I turned back toward Lily, she was shakily signing something to her brother.
Alice started to turn in the direction Kajika had fled.
“Take me to Pietro,” Ace told her.
“He’s in the abandoned lodge next to the cemetery. Go find him yourself,” she snarled. “You can pick him up from there. Sorry, pluck him up. I’d heard you turned into flowers when you died, but I had to see it to believe it.”
“What?” Ace’s voice vibrated inside my bones. “You killed him?”
Alice fixed him with her snake eyes and then she started running, but Ace flew toward her and flung his shimmering dust into her face. She froze. Her body contracted, fell, and shuddered like a cockroach. And then she retched. She rose to her knees and threw up again. She began to scuttle away, but fell face first in the pool of vomit that was sinking into the sand.
I spun around. “Ace, stop. Stop or this feud will never end.” I raised my palms to his face and pressed them against his hot, bristly skin to force him to look at me.
When he did, his eyes were slick with bloodlust. “If anything happens to my sister, another hunter dies. Perhaps this time it will be you.” He ripped his face out of my cold, cold hands and shot up into the sky.
My eyes swam. I pressed the heels of my palms into them as I dropped onto the beach. A hand skimmed my knee. I opened my sore eyes. Lily was kneeling beside me, holding her phone out.
Would you like me to burn away her body?
“She’s really dead?” I croaked.
Lily nodded.
I swallowed back the no pulsing against my palate. How could I explain Alice’s death to my father? To Kajika? What revenge would the hunters wage on faeries—on Ace—if they discovered that he’d gassed her?
So I nodded, and Lily rose to her feet and walked to the crumpled body. Blue flames flickered over her skin and then lurched toward Alice, laminating her body in flames that ate at her clothes and then at her form until there was no more body, only ashes on the sand. Pale ashes that would not transform into a commemorative plant. Pale ashes that would be swept into the lake. That would sink to the bottom like silt.
I shivered, frozen by the horror of what I’d just witnessed, frozen by Ace’s cruel retribution and pitiless warning. I shook harder.
Lily returned to me. Crouched before me. Raised her phone. He would never kill you, Cat.
Laughter and earsplitting music whirled around us. Those noises sounded so wrong.
Cat, he won’t. Pietro was one of his closest friends.
All the more reason to kill me. Pietro died because of me. I prayed I was wrong, but I’d tasted venom on Ace’s breath.
Let’s go home.
Home.
She considered my house home. The thought buffeted my thrashing emotions. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Lily.” And not because I didn’t want to die—which I didn’t—but because what happened tonight was in no way her fault.
If anything, she’d saved Kajika by marking him.
Even if it had incensed him.
I let her hold my arm as we walked back toward Cass’s party. I was glad for the support. As we made our way toward the crowd, I realized I hadn’t asked Lily to save Alice. Maybe she could’ve called her soul back. Did that make me complicit in her murder? My gut rolled like the waves earlier and nausea crashed up my throat and into my mouth. I spun away from Lily and emptied my sour stomach. Tears pricked my eyes like needles.
Throat on fire, I swallowed.
Lily rubbed my arm, which brought on more tears, because my mother did the same thing when I was sick.
I scrubbed my hands against my swollen eyes. “Why was Kajika so angry with you?”
She glanced at me, bit her lip, then looked toward the calm surf dappled with demented partygoers. The water would freeze their drunken asses if they weren’t careful.
Lily’s phone appeared in front of my eyes, too bright in the darkness. I squinted to read her words, but then my squint turned into a wide-eyed stare.
“There you are! I was looking for you two everywhere!” Cass yipped, trotting toward us. “Did you see those waves? They were in-fucking-sane!” Her clothes were matted to her body, the feathers of the lariat glued to her speedily-rising chest, her bangs stringy. “I’m going back in. Come with me!”
“In a sec, Cass,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, no ghost,” I whispered.
Lily’s fingers tightened around my arm.
“But yeah, I don’t feel too well. I think I got food poisoning.”
Cass wrinkled her nose. “Aw. That sucks.”
I nodded. “I’m going to head home. Happy birthday, sweetie.” I freed my arm from Lily’s grasp to hug my friend. “Be careful in the water.”
Cass rolled her eyes.
As Lily and I watched her run back to the calm surf, I said, “Maybe it’s because the mark is so fresh.”
Lily gnawed on her lip.
Rising Silver Mist Page 12
