B00AO57VOY EBOK (37 page)

He pulled back and looked at
me, his eyes scanning mine for a long time.  Smiling weakly, he leaned down and
placed a soft, gentle kiss on my lips.  .

“Somebody put that damn
thing out,” he said, keeping his eyes on mine rather than look at my burning
doppelganger, reaching out to run the back of his knuckles along my cheek. 

“I got it,” Blake said,
ducking out of the room.

He was back in a matter of
seconds with a fire extinguisher.  As soon as the fire went out, Tyler picked
it up and carried it out with the fake me still tied to it.  Kim and Blake
followed him out, giving me and Nathan a few minutes of privacy.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Nathan
whispered miserably.  “I was angry and scared, but I never should have said
what I did.  I didn’t mean it, Em.  None of it.  I will always wait for you.”

“You have nothing to be
sorry for,” I told him, laying my hand over his heart again.  “Now,
I
have plenty to apologize for.  And I plan to be very creative about it, too. 
So, let’s go get this done so I can get to work making everything up to you.  I
think, what, two days alone at our cabin should do it?”

“A solid week,” he said,
smiling weakly.  “To start with.”

Nathan held out his hand for
mine and we walked out together.  Tyler, Kim, and Blake were a short ways down
the hall, talking in quiet voices.

“What was that thing?” I
asked the second we were close to them.

“A very clever, very cruel,
ploy,” Tyler muttered, giving Nathan a narrow-eyed look of caution.  “You okay,
Nate?”

“I am now,” he said,
wrapping his arm around me and pulling me close.  “You shouldn’t have let her
touch me, though, Tyler.  I nearly killed her.  What the hell were you
thinking?”

“That you were going to
commit vampire hari-kari,” Blake said, clapping him on the shoulder.  “We
wouldn’t have let you kill her, Nate.  Give us
some
credit.  If you
hadn’t let go when you did, you’d be in serious pain right now.”

I shot him a look that told
him to shut up and change the subject and he immediately closed his mouth. 
Seeing that he wasn’t going to do it, I decided to move the conversation along
to less sensitive areas.

“What did you do with it?” I
asked Tyler, looking behind him like he might have hung my fried doppelganger
on a hook from the ceiling or something.

“We have it stored in one of
the empty rooms,” Blake answered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.  “Shea
said not to dispose of it until she’d had a chance to examine it.”

“Go get it and put it back
where we found it,” I told him, tapping my finger against my chin as I thought
about what we needed to do.  “And if there’s some way to make it look like it
hasn’t caught fire yet, let’s do that, too.  A Glamour should do the trick,
right?  I want Bastian to think Nathan hasn’t seen it yet, that he still has
that advantage.”

“Bloody brilliant,
beautiful,” Tyler said, smiling at me and moving to do as I asked. 

“And you might want to hurry,”
Kim called after him, frowning down at her phone before putting it back in the
small bag attached to her wrist.  “I’d say we have about fifteen minutes before
our favorite demon arrives.  You ready, Em?”

I looked up at Nathan,
remembering the way he had looked at me as he stared at that burning Ember
doll, and found a whole new sense of purpose.  I was tired of Bastian screwing
with my life and the people I loved.  He was finally going to meet his match. 
I wasn’t the girls I had been in my other lives. 

I was strong.  I was
capable.  And I was pissed.

Yeah, I was ready.

∞§∞§∞§∞

“Ladies and gentlemen! 
Let’s hear it for the victorious Oakhurst Academy Phoenixes!”

We had barely made it back
inside the gym and retrieved my bag from the table where I had been sitting
when the DJ’s voice made the booming announcement that our football team had
arrived.  I turned just as my classmates let out a deafening roar to find the
football team parading into the gym with their dates as the balloons from
overhead rained down on them.  And leading the pack, the Homecoming Queen,
Angel Murray, on his arm, was the demon who had almost ruined my life.

Bastian’s eyes met mine
where I stood watching his procession with Angel—no, the irony wasn’t lost on
me, either—and the totally perverted leer he gave me made me wish I had worn a
nun’s habit to the dance instead of my gown.  The blue flickered out of his
eyes for a second when he saw my mark and I smiled smugly.  No matter what he
did now, I would always belong to Nathan.  He had already lost. 

He pulled his arm from Angel
and reached up and plucked the elaborate Homecoming crown off her perfectly
done hair.  She gasped in outrage as he sauntered over to where I stood and
placed it delicately on my head.

“You’ll always be
my
queen,
Ember,” he purred, ignoring Nathan, Tyler, Blake and Kim like they were part of
the decorations. 

I snatched the crown off and
stomped back over to Angel and put it back where it belonged.  She smiled at
me, but I could see the anger in her eyes.  Poor girl, she actually thought she
had won something because Jack was her date. 

“I’m sorry,” I told her,
glaring at Bastian over her shoulder.  “He’s a dick.  He can’t help himself.”

“You’re right,” she said,
turning to glare at her date, too.  “He really is a dick.”

She proceeded to the stage
alone with her head held high and the crowd roaring around her in
encouragement.  She really would have made an excellent queen in another time. 
I knew she was embarrassed and hurt, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at
her. 

Be careful, baby,
Nathan
said quietly in my mind when I caught his eye and nodded. 

I’m always careful,
I
told him, smiling at the mental snort of skepticism that produced. 
Wait for
my signal and then send in the cavalry. 

While everyone else was
focused on Angel, I concealed my essence so Bastian couldn’t find me until I
was ready for him to, just like Grams had taught me, and teleported out of
sight.  I had a job to do and all I wanted to think about was getting it done. 

I reappeared back in the
hallway of the west wing and felt my skin crawl as I thought of that dead dummy
again.  I waited until I was sure I was alone and then continued toward the
room at the end of the hall and my destiny.  It was just like it had been in my
nightmare, only I wasn’t terrified anymore.  In fact, I felt very calm, serene
even.

My veil of serenity didn’t
even crumble when I walked into the room Ms. Cantrell had prepared for us. 
Everything had been cleared out of it.  The floor had been swept completely
clean except for four large crystals—the fifth of which was in the small satin
bag attached to my wrist along with the remote to the black light that would
activate the circles Ms. Cantrell had drawn.  According to Grams, the light was
hidden in the darkest corner of the room where the moonlight streaming through
the window couldn’t reach it. 

Yeah, because I trusted Ms.
Cantrell.  Uh-huh.  Right.  Okay, so we still didn’t have any concrete proof
that she had summoned Bastian back from the lost plane or messed with the wards
on our house or the protection spell that had failed in time for me to become
Ember the Screaming Lobster Girl.

But, we didn’t have any
proof that she hadn’t done all those things, either. 

Just to be on the safe side,
I dug in my bag and found the tiny remote to check the light.  I held my breath
as I hit the power button, sure that nothing was going to happen, but the light
blinked on as promised.  What I
hadn’t
been expecting was the true work
of art that appeared at my feet.

The design drawn on the
floor was elaborate.  It was called a Devil’s Trap, according to Grams. It was
in the shape of pentagram within another circle composed of Latin words that I
couldn’t read.  Within the pentagram were drawn sigils and runes that I didn’t
recognize but that were beautiful in their own way.  The crystals had been
placed at each point of the star save one, the one I would have to place when I
got Bastian inside it.  Within the pentagram was drawn the Triangle of the
Arts.  It was the circle within the triangle that I had to get him to step
into.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I
muttered still staring at the design before me.  “Guess the old hag isn’t so
bad, after all.”

Seeing how perfectly she had
drawn the trap, I couldn’t help but think Nathan might have gotten it wrong. 
Yeah, Ms. Cantrell was a bitter old crone, but maybe she wasn’t really
downright
evil
.  Until I had reason to believe otherwise, I decided to
give her the benefit of the doubt.

Taking a deep breath to
prepare myself, I turned off the light and then got down to business.  Summon
the demon, trap the demon.  It sounded so easy, but I knew it was going to be
anything but.

And if I wasn’t very
careful, the next body Nathan found really
would
be mine. 

Taking the crystal out of my
bag, I threw the scrap of satin in the corner and then stood in the very place
I would need Bastian to be to bind him.  Closing my eyes, I cleared my mind of
everything and everyone but the demon I was about to summon.  I let go of my
emotions, finding my center the way Grams had taught me to do, and then, very
softly, began to chant.  Despite what you see in the movies, witches really
don’t need to scream and yell like nutcases to get what they want. 

“Powers of the witches rise,

Course unseen across the skies,

Hear me beckon, hear my plea,

Bastian, I summon thee!”

The effect was almost
instantaneous.  One second I was alone and the next I was hit the nauseous
feeling I usually associated with Bastian’s presence.  I turned around slowly
to find my nemesis was leaned in the doorway, a creepy smirk on his lips.

It was time for the games to
begin.

“I knew you would come
around,” Bastian crooned pleasantly when our eyes met across the moonlit room. 
I waited for the smoke to fill my lungs, the odor of burnt skin to fill the
room, but it didn’t come.  Instead, all I felt was a serene feeling, like I’d
become something beyond him.  “It looked like you and lover boy were having
problems, anyway.  It’s for the best.  I’m tired of playing games with him,
Ember.  You’re going to give yourself to me, or I’m going to kill
him
this time.  And do you know, I don’t think he will even fight me, not after
what I have in store for him.”

Well,
someone
was in
for a nasty little surprise, now weren’t they?

“I should have killed him
centuries ago,” he said, casually pushing away from his post in the doorway and
starting toward me.  “It has been
so
entertaining to watch him wallow in
agony for the last four hundred years, though, seeing as he keeps repeatedly
foiling my plans.”

I knew he was just trying to
bait me, but it wasn’t going to work.  I was going to get revenge for
everything he had done to me and to Nathan, but I wouldn’t be able to
concentrate if I was angry.

“Why did you kill those
girls?” I asked, really wanting to know.  Of all the puzzles Grams and Nathan
and Tyler and Charles’ mom had been able to solve for me that was the one
question no one had been able to answer.  “They never did anything to you, so
why kill them?”

He stopped and looked at me
for a second, his eyes sweeping down my gown, lingering on the swell of my
breasts, the curve of my hip.  When he finally reached my eyes again, there was
a carnal hunger in them that…well, kind of made me sick.

“What can I say?  I missed
you,” he said, shrugging and linking his hands behind his back.  “Besides, I
needed a way to send a message to an old friend.”

“So you killed them for the
fun of it, right?” I asked, a burst of fury making me feel lightheaded. 

“Come now, Ember.  Let’s be
honest with each other.”  He tilted his head, giving me a patronizing look. 
“Tell me you wouldn’t lose it just a little if you found your love in the arms
of another.”

 “What do
you
know
about love?” I asked him coldly. 

“Oh, I know a great deal
about love,” he said, his eyes blazing with anger.  “I know that it makes you
weak, that it drives you mad with desire and leaves your heart in a shattered
heap at your feet.  It turns brothers into enemies and brings down dynasties. 
And I know that in order to win at this torturous game of the heart, sometimes
you have to kill the very thing you desire.” 

“Are you talking about me? 
Or Gabriella?”  He stopped where he was, like just the sound of Gabriella’s
name had been enough to freeze him in place.  I smiled.  “Yeah, Bastian, I know
about Gabby.”

“Then you know your lover
killed her,” he growled, his eyes bright crimson in his anger.  “You know he
fed on her like she was no better than common cattle!”