“Did she find any?”
“I will discover this tonight.”
As he walked past us, Lily kept her gaze averted—not only averted but her eyes were closed—while Kajika’s were wide open and unabashedly taking in the faerie.
What had she thought through their bond that made her so uncomfortable and him so shocked? The second the truck rumbled off, I asked her.
She bent her elbows, pressed the tips of her index fingers to the tips of her thumbs and shook her hands laterally and symmetrically. The sign for nothing.
I snorted. Nothing, my foot.
She crooked her finger at me, then signed the word phone. After entering my passcode, I passed her my phone. I thought she would type out an explanation, but I was wrong. She wrote step-by-step instructions of what I needed to do to pull the dust from inside of me.
But my dust lurked in a different place than hers.
I told her this. She simply bobbed her head and wrote try. So I tried doing exactly what she’d written—squeeze my hands tight until they prickled with the nervous tension of the magic desirous to be released—but besides embedding crescents into my palms, nothing happened.
She made fists, then opened her fingers and turned her palms face-side up. Gold specks flickered in the air over her palms. I stepped back. It was involuntary—I trusted Lily—but my body remembered the acrid taste as it had slid down my airways and swelled the lining of my throat. Lily balled her fingers, and the twinkling motes snuck back under her skin.
As soon as the air stopped shimmering, I gulped in a hungry lungful.
Lily slid my phone out of her denim shorts’ back pocket, typed in my passcode, which she’d apparently learned by heart, and wrote, You don’t have to hold your breath.
A thought slithered into me at her words. “The one time I used it”—Stella’s gray face swam in front of my eyes—“I tasted it. I don’t think it came from my fingers, Lily. I think it came from my throat. Is that possible? Could it leak out through the tattoo?”
With you, anything is possible. Do you remember how you coaxed it out?
“You mean, besides feeling homicidal?” I carved my hand through my loose hair.
I’d tried to erase the memory of that day from my mind, but it lurked just beneath the surface, its strings shivering in my peripheral vision. If I so much as plucked one of the strings, the entire confrontation unfolded, beat by awful beat. I closed my eyes and tugged on the string inside my mind, unspooled the memory. I shivered and shuddered as it played again in vivid detail. Like a kids’ coloring picture, it filled with new spots of color.
“It pulsed furiously, as though it wanted to get out. As though it had a mind of its own or was a separate entity.”
Lily listened, face cocked to the side.
“When I touched my neck, the skin was deadened. That’s how I knew it had left my body, but I thought it had left because Stella had somehow taken it back. I didn’t realize the dust had escaped to kill her.”
Chewing on her bottom lip, she typed, The only reason we bring it out through our hands is to better control it. Technically it could come from any place on our bodies… But our dust is spread thin in our veins, whereas yours is localized in one place. What happens when you touch the tattoo?
“The dust pulses harder.” I touched the tip of my index finger against one spot on my tattoo to show her—if there was even anything to see.
Lily stepped in closer, eyes going from narrow to wide in seconds. It rushes to your finger. I mean the other lines stay visible, but it’s like a volcano in that one spot.
“Don’t stand so close, Lily.”
She shushed me with a flick of her hand. Put your entire palm over your tattoo and tell me what you feel.
It felt as though I’d lowered my hand inside an ant farm, as though thousands of tiny furry legs were traipsing over my palm. I told Lily this.
Pull your hand away really slowly.
I stepped back—even though Lily was fearless, I was cautious—and yanked my hand off.
Lips pinched, she shook her head. What part of really slowly did you not understand? Try it again. SLOWLY.
I placed my palm against my throat and waited for my hand to feel engulfed by ants again. When my skin tingled, I pulled my hand away excruciatingly slowly, millimeter by millimeter. The tingling continued but the sensation changed. It was almost as though some magnetic field had formed between my throat and my hand, like my skin had been covered in cobwebs and those cobwebs were stretching as I pulled.
I peeked down, and sure enough, glittering filaments strained between my palm and my throat. My heart sped up at the sight. Amazed and shocked, I tugged my hand off, and the invisible threads tore. “Did you see that?”
Lily nodded, a smile brightening her face, which was too close to me again.
“What the hell are you doing, Lily?” The gruff, intrusive voice made both Lily and me spin.
Ace stood mere feet away, a deep scowl ingrained in his features.
Lily relaxed and signed something to her brother. I picked up no words in the rapid-fire series Lily executed, but I imagined she was telling him she was teaching me to use dust.
Ace signed back to her, his scowl deepening so fast it would leave permanent grooves in his forehead if he wasn’t careful. One sign, a fist knocking against his temple, was familiar to me: stupid.
I folded my arms against my chest tightly. “Don’t call her stupid.”
That caught Ace’s undivided attention. He glared. “She teaching you sign language too? Wow. And here I thought my sister was the smart one.”
Lily’s breaths hitched, and then her hands zipped through the air to form more words.
Ace barely glanced at the frenzied movements of her hands. “I found a better arrangement for you. A penthouse in New York. I secured it and stocked it. Let’s go.”
My heart whacked my ribs, and my brand flared. I wanted to say, don’t take her away and Lily’s safe here, but was she? In a town overrun by hunters? With one hunter who could read her thoughts? Keeping her here would be all shades of selfish.
Ace’s palm glowed so brightly, it turned into a beacon of light. He curled his fingers into the tightest fist known to mankind. “A fucking hunter can get into your head, Lily. It’s not safe for you here.”
Lily signed something.
“I know I’m the one who brought you here, but I don’t know what I was thinking.” Anger flowed off him in fierce gusts.
“Is it really for her safety that you want to take her away?”
Ace closed the distance between us so fast his heated breaths hit the tip of my nose. “You’re flighty and irresponsible. With poisonous blood and an unhealthy fixation on learning to use your hunter skills. Since I’ve dropped her off, you’ve put her in danger more than once. First you bring her here”—he spit on the floor—“with a hunter, and not just any hunter, but your little fuck buddy.”
I jerked away from him, dust pulsing so hard against the skin of my neck I clamped my mouth shut and gritted my teeth to keep it in. Not that it would lurch up my throat. At least I’d figured out it didn’t work that way. “He’s not my fuck buddy,” I hissed.
“Whatever. You and him, you’re not good for her. You’re using her, milking her for information on how to destroy faeries. Don’t think I haven’t attended your little training sessions.” He air-quoted the word training.
That set me off. I poked him with my finger. “If you watched them, then you’d know your sister came of her own volition and volunteered to help. I didn’t drag her here and make her teach me anything. Besides, I have no fucking interest in killing faeries.” I was still poking him when what I really wanted to do was push him away. I shoved him hard, but his body didn’t budge. I tried again but it was like trying to displace a brick wall.
He smirked. “All those hours of practice with Kajika and not much to show for it, huh?”
His sarcasm pissed me off. But it wasn’t the only thing that
pissed me off. My freaking weakness ticked me off. Ace caught my wrist and held it. I pulled, but couldn’t break free of his hold.
“I take it back,” I said.
His pupils widened, turning his eyes as dark as my own. “What part do you take back?” His voice was so husky it thickened my blood.
I raised my chin. “The part where I said I had no interest in killing faeries. There is one I could do without.”
“Careful, little hunter.”
“Of what?”
He yanked on my wrist, almost dislodging my shoulder. I staggered forward, slamming into his hard chest. He dropped his mouth to my ear. “Of me. Of what I could do to you.”
My imagination got carried away, and not with scenes of torture. The panoramas in my mind were of a much different nature. Inches of bare skin. Warm fingers and tongues. Sweat beading down a sculpted torso. Hardening nipples. Mine. His. A hand sliding down. A sapphire ring glinting on slender fingers.
Was that supposed to be my hand? I didn’t own a sapphire ring.
Cold air filled my mouth and throat like a gulp of wintry lake, stinging my lungs. I felt disoriented, confused, as though I’d stepped out of my body and was watching a stranger. A stranger who was fantasizing about a deadly faerie.
Like an elastic, I snapped out of my trance. “How dare you, Ace?” I yelled. “Using captis on me!”
Although his features tightened, his fingers did the exact opposite. I slipped my wrist out of his hold and nursed it against my rapidly rising chest.
“Was that even me in your twisted scenario, ’cause I don’t have a sapphire ring!”
He frowned.
“What game are you playing? Break the little hunter’s self-esteem, then break her freewill? You might think I’m weak and pliable, but I could hurt you if I chose.” Tears pricked my eyelids. “I could really hurt you, Ace Wood.” The outline of his body feathered. “I just choose not to.”
He stayed still.
So very still.
The dust in my neck still pulsed, but its rhythm had turned sluggish, as though it felt the immediate threat to its owner was gone. I looked for Lily, but she was no longer there. I wondered when she’d left. Before or after her brother had toyed with my emotions?
“You are such a child, Ace.” I knew the man in him would hate that comment. Sure enough, he flinched. “Picking on me because I ended things between us. Your sister is a million times more mature than you. You don’t see her vengefully plotting Cruz’s destruction, even though what he did to her is unforgivable.”
Ace stared at me, his eyes a blur of blue through my tears.
“I pushed you away for your own good,” I murmured. “How is that unforgivable?”
After a terribly long beat, he said, “My own good? How about you let me decide what’s good for me, Cat?”
And then he stalked out of the barn.
Once the heavy door banged shut, I yelled from frustration. And then I strode over to the punching bag in the corner and smashed my fists into the hard leather until my knuckles cracked and bled.
28
The Forest
When I arrived home that night, knuckles as raw as my mood, I half-expected Lily to be gone, but she was having tea with my father in the living room, laughing at a story he was recounting.
Dad jumped to his feet at the sight of me, his gaze zipping down to the dried blood coating my hands. “Honey, are you all right?”
Lily peered at my hands over the rim of her tea mug, a frown pleating her brow. Did she think it was her brother’s blood?
Silly me.
Faeries had fire, not blood. I might’ve laughed maniacally if I hadn’t felt so drained.
Dad must’ve thought I was in shock, because he led me over to the couch and made me sit next to Lily. She set her mug down.
“I’ll get some antiseptic and Band-Aids.” He climbed the stairs two at a time.
I wanted to tell him it was okay, but decided to let him baby me, if only to get a little privacy to find out if Lily was leaving. Before I could ask, she tapped on my phone’s lit screen.
“You had my phone?” I’d spent way too long scouring the barn for it.
She clicked her nail against the screen to get my attention. Right. Her message. You didn’t make up?
I looked up so fast, my neck creaked. “You thought we’d make up?”
She nodded.
I sandwiched my lips. “That’s not going to happen, Lily.”
Why not?
“I thought you were staying out of the Ace-and-Cat-drama?” From the tapering of her eyes, I guessed that answer didn’t please her, so I added, “Ace is too childish for me.” I added a sigh to my explanation so that she believed it.
Lily blinked and leaned away from me, as though my comment had physically pained her. I tugged a hand through my hair, which was still damp from my strenuous punching session.
“I found the antiseptic, but where are the Band-Aids?” Dad asked, rushing down the squeaky stairs.
“Kitchen drawer,” I said.
Drawers clanked and banged as he searched for the right one. I could’ve given him clearer directions, but it bought me a few more seconds. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
Still looking at me through those pained gray eyes of hers, she shook her head, but it was so faint, it was barely a shudder.
Exhaling a frustrated breath, she seized my phone again and typed a message just as Dad reappeared from the kitchen with everything he needed to patch me up. If only he could patch me up on the inside too, slap a Band-Aid or two on my heart. As he worked on one of my hands, Lily lifted the phone in front of my face.
My cheeks flushed bright as I read it, and brighter when Dad’s eyes darted toward the screen. I grabbed the phone from Lily’s hand and powered it off before he could read any more. If he caught any words, he didn’t mention them.
Lily rose and walked to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
“So who did you punch?” Dad asked after a long stretch of silence.
“What?”
He nodded toward my puckered knuckles.
“A punching bag.”
“Is there anything left of it?”
A small smile flitted over my trembling lips. “Believe it or not, it looks better than me.”
After Dad tended to my broken skin, he looked up at me. “What made you assault a punching bag?”
I sighed. “I was angry. At a boy.” Not only was my answer truthful, but it would put a stop to the discussion. Dad enjoyed discussing boys as much as I enjoyed funeral shop-talk.
Surprisingly, he asked, “Kajika?”
I shook my head. “No. But, Dad, you really don’t have to worry.”
“My little girl injures herself over some boy, and you don’t think I’m going to worry?”
As he squashed the unused Band-Aids back inside the little carton, I stood up and kissed his forehead. “I promise, Dad, you have nothing to worry about. By tomorrow, I’ll be over him.”
He let out an unconvinced grunt, but he didn’t say anything else or go after me when I went to my bedroom.
I closed my door softly, then slid down the painted wood and turned my phone on to reread Lily’s message.
My brother might act like a child sometimes, but he is the kindest, most loving and protective person in your world AND in mine. And he loves you. Yeah. LOVES you. You’ll never find a better man, Cat. Never. You are an IDIOT. That’s all I’ll say. After this, we’ll never speak about it again, because if we do, I’ll get really really angry with you and call you an idiot AGAIN!
The tiny black curves making up her words fragmented and aligned at wrong angles, blurred and blotted. I blinked. They cleared up and realigned, their curves again smooth and unbroken. But then new tears formed in my strained eyes and the message distorted again.
Ugh. I tossed my phone on my bed and wept for my sorry-ass self a while longer. Maybe I am an idiot, Lily, but I’m an idiot who’s trying to keep you
r brother safe.
The following morning, after a restless, dreamless night, I pulled myself out of bed and went running before dawn broke over Rowan. I ran hard and fast, my brand burning so hard it felt like the fiery W was leaking into my blood.
Ace didn’t show up. Not that I was expecting him to. He no longer came when my brand flared.
Instead of taking my usual route toward the beach, I headed in the opposite direction, down winding trails I hadn’t taken in years. Woodchips crunched under the soles of my sneakers, leaves on low branches fluttered as I blew past them, birds chirped in the tall pines, insects buzzed beside my head. None of those insects glowed unnaturally.
After half an hour, I turned back and walked to catch my breath. Just as I was about to pick up the pace, so I wouldn’t be late to work, a body dropped from the sky.
A glowing and very familiar body.
It landed inches from me.
“Hi, Catori.”
I froze, then scanned the woods for other faeries, but the rest of the forest was calm.
Too calm.
Dreadfully calm.
29
The Proposal
Cruz stood before me, eyes blazing green in his tanned face. He smiled, a chilling, too-bright smile. I scrambled backward, stumbling over a thick branch. I grabbed hold of a trunk to steady myself.
Slowly, I reached into my pocket for the tiny rowan wood arrow Kajika had given me. I never left the house without it anymore.
Cruz punched the middle of my arm, making the stick fly out of my grasp. He picked it up, and smoke curled from his skin. He flung the poisonous wood wide into the brambles, and I cursed myself for having whipped it out so clumsily.
My dust pulsed against my throat. I raised my hand to it, touched it.
“Hands down, Catori. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
Heart zinging, I let my arms drop. The W burned harder, a stinging reminder of the bond I’d broken because of the boy standing in front of me.
“Why’d you do it, Cruz? Why’d you tell Gregor that Lily took the book? I thought you loved her…”
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