B00AO57VOY EBOK (8 page)

To lie or not to lie?  That
was
the question.  I could tell by the evil gleam in Nathan’s eyes that he would
shoot down any lie I told, so I decided to save myself some time and just get
the ass-chewing I was about to receive over with.

“Okay, Grams,” I sighed,
leaning against the counter next to me.  “Yes, we broke into the funeral home. 
But!” I yelled, holding off the screaming that was about to commence when Grams
opened her mouth.  “It was for a good cause.  I was trying to find out where
Jack was, and I thought—”

“Jack?” Grams repeated, her
voice suddenly so calm and frigid that I shivered in response to it.  “Jack is
gone, Ember.  You know that better than anyone.  You’re the one who banished
him.”

And he reminds me of that
every night
, I thought, blinking against tears. 
Every single damn
night.

“He’s back, Shea,” Nathan
said quietly, giving me a sympathetic look when I swallowed hard.  “He left me
a personal message.”  He pulled the crumpled newspaper article with my picture
superimposed over Casey’s out of his pocket and laid it in front of Grams. 
Then, turning his eyes back to my quickly paling face, he pulled my cross out
of his other pocket.  “And this.”

Grams took one look at the
necklace Nathan laid in the center of the table and jumped to her feet like it
was about to attack her.  My eyes drifted closed when she started backing away
from the table altogether, and I resumed the countdown I’d begun in the garage.

Seven…six…

“How did he get that?” Grams
hissed, sounding like a pissed off cat who’d just been dunked in ice water. 
Yeah, that didn’t bode well for me.

“I have no idea,” Nathan
told her calmly.  “I can guarantee Ember didn’t give it to him as a gift.  She
never takes that cross off, Shea.”

I opened my eyes to give him
a grateful look for defending me and found myself staring at Grams instead.  Her
expression caused what little blood was left in my face to drain out in quick
order, leaving me feeling lightheaded.  Our eyes met and the horror I saw there
made me cringe.  Without looking away from her, I walked over to the table to
retrieve my necklace.  Before I could touch it, Grams reached over and smacked
my hand.

“Don’t touch it!” she cried
shrilly as I jerked my hand back.  “He’s done something to it.  I can
feel
the darkness coming off of it.”

Five…four….

Ordering Nathan to get her a
bowl, she leaned over the table to examine my necklace.  “Bring me something to
pick it up with, Nate.”

When Nathan came back to the
table, he had a bowl in one hand and a pair of salad tongs in the other. 
Without even bothering to look at him, she grabbed the tongs and carefully
picked up my pendant.  For a long moment, she just stared at it, her lips
moving silently.  A cloudy black substance started to seep through the gold,
turning the beautiful cross ugly and scary.  Watching the process, I felt a
cold sense of dread start to twist my stomach into a giant knot.

“Yes, that’s what I
thought,” Grams muttered.

“He didn’t do that on his
own, Shea,” Nathan said, peering at the necklace through narrowed eyes.

“No, I don’t believe he did,
either,” Grams said, still concentrating on the blackening pendant dangling
before her.  “I’m just glad it was found before it could do any harm.”

Without another word, Grams
resumed her silent chant.  I watched, torn between fascination and fear, as a
stream of radiant golden light slid down the chain between the tongs and
wrapped itself around the trinity-heart knot engraved in the center of the
cross.  It crept out from there, covering every inch of the pendant.  Within
seconds, a black, tar-like substance began to drip into the bowl Nathan slid
smoothly under it.  The putrid odor of rotten eggs was suddenly the only smell
in the room.  It was overpowering enough to make me gag.

“What the hell
is that
?”
I asked, waving my hand in front of my face like that would help. 
Unfortunately, it only made it worse. 

“Poison,” Grams barked, not
even looking my direction. 

“Poison?” I repeated softly,
staring over at Nathan.  “What kind of poison?”

“A very rare, very potent
poison,” Grams explained, her voice brittle with anger. “The second you put it
on, you would have been infected.  Within an hour, you would have slipped into
a coma, giving your demon just the chance he needed to take you.”

“You touched it,” I choked
out in a strangled whisper, still staring at Nathan. 

“It won’t work on him,”
Grams snapped, never tearing her eyes from the glowing piece of jewelry before
her that was still dripping that awful, stinking fluid.  “It’s specifically
designed for humans, Ember.  Amongst the bandraoithe, it’s known as Sleeping
Death.  Most who are infected by it never wake up.”

“Like Sleeping Beauty?” I
asked with a nervous laugh, nearly giddy with relief that Nathan hadn’t been
infected with a poison meant for me.  I realized about a second too late that I
probably should have kept my mouth shut.  The totally pissed look Grams leveled
at me was enough to make me want to hide in that hole for real.

 “Which is based on a very
true story of a king who crossed a bandraoi.  He wanted her daughter for his
bride and the girl denied him.  In revenge for his smarting pride, he had the
girl killed.  Her mother waited, nursing her hate until the king had a
daughter.  On the girl’s fifteenth birthday, she lured her out into the garden
and gave her a red rose, the thorns of which were coated with this very
poison.  The princess was one of those who never woke up.”  Giving me a pointed
look, she said, “Blood witches can be vicious when crossed. 
Very
vicious.”

She sounded like she was
just telling me some messed up fairy tale, but I knew Grams.  That calm was all
an act.  She was about a second away from nuclear detonation, and I
really
didn’t
want to be there when the countdown reached zero.  But, as much as I wanted to,
I didn’t run.  Bearing the wrath of my grandmother was the least I deserved.

Once she finished magically
siphoning the poison from my cross, the bowl was almost half full of the
reeking black liquid.  I cringed when she asked Nathan to dispose of it,
knowing my reprieve had come to an end.  The second the back door closed behind
him, she turned her full attention—as well as the full force of her anger—on
me.

Three…two…

“Now, Ember Leigh,” she
said, keeping up that act of calm that was starting to make me extremely
nervous.  “Would you care to give me an explanation for how your necklace ended
up nailed to a
tree
?”

Even when Nathan demanded to
know how my necklace had ended up somewhere other than my neck
,
I hadn’t
been able to give him an answer.  But with Grams looking about one word away
from frying me crispy, suddenly my brain was working just fine, and I knew
exactly
how it had gotten off my neck.  How it got into the woods, on the other
hand…

Honestly, the explanation
was simple—not that I was crazy enough to think
Grams
would see it that
way.  The cross had gotten tangled in my hair when I was showering after gym. 
I’d had to unclasp it to get it loose and then, because I’m
stupid
, I’d
hung it on the hook with my towel.  It must have fallen off when I was getting
out, and I hadn’t even noticed it.

“Oh, shit!” I whispered,
without thinking.  “Oh, no no no no no!”

“Oh, yes yes yes,” Grams
said angrily.  “Tell me, Ember, how a demon ended up with a sacred amulet that
wasn’t supposed to leave your person!”

“I messed up,” I told her
miserably, stopping my retreat.  “It got tangled in my hair, and I took it off
in the shower.”

“And how did it end up in the
woods?” she snapped, narrowing her eyes at me.

“I don’t know,” I whispered,
holding back tears, just as Nathan came back through the door.  “Seriously,
Grams.  I don’t know how he got it.”

“Shea, that’s enough,”
Nathan said, seeing how close to a complete breakdown I was getting.  “She made
a mistake, that’s all.”

“She doesn’t have the luxury
of making mistakes,” Grams said, her voice as hard as stone.  “When will you
understand, Ember?  You are
special
!”

“But I don’t want to
be
special,
damn it!” I yelled, ignoring the tears that overflowed onto my cheeks.  “I
never wanted
any
of this!”

She stared at me for a
moment, looking like she was trying to decide if she wanted to respond or not,
then turned and looked at Nathan.  “You will not leave her side.  Do you
understand?  Another mistake like this could be fatal.  I’ll call Amelia and
start making arrangements for a guard detail.”

 “And as for you,” Grams
said, turning back to glare at me some more.  “Your refusal to embrace who and
what you are ends
right now
.  I have indulged your little rebellion long
enough. You will come directly home from school every day and study with me. 
You will accept your heritage and learn to control your powers, or you will
learn a whole new definition for the word ‘wrath’.  I will not lose you to this
demon—or to your own self-pity.  Is that understood, my darling granddaughter?”

She waited until I nodded my
agreement, and then, pausing to give me back my necklace, she speared me with a
disappointed look and stalked out of the kitchen without another word.  Once
she was gone, I stared down at the cross resting on my palm and let the misery
have me.

“You okay, baby?” Nathan
asked when the silence in the room was too loud to stand anymore.

“I’m fine,” I whispered,
swallowing hard against the tears threatening to overwhelm me.  “I just…I
thought it was all over.  I thought I could have my life back without all the
craziness that goes with being a witch.  But I can’t, can I?”

“I’m so sorry, Em,” he said
softly, tugging me against him as he wrapped me up in the calming scent of his
skin and the silky tones of his voice just as much as he wrapped me in his
arms.  “I tried to tell you, baby.  You can’t run from who you are.”

“He’s not going to stop is
he?” I whispered against Nathan’s chest as a fresh wave of tears overflowed,
soaking into the fabric of his t-shirt.  “He’s just going to keep coming after
me until I screw up and he kills me.”

Nathan drew away just enough
to frown at me and then gently cupped my face in his hands, brushing the tears
from my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.  For a long time, he just looked at
me.  The sadness and fear in his eyes terrified me, because they let me know I
was right.  He couldn’t save me.  Grams couldn’t save me. 

But if Jack thought I was
going down without a fight, he had another thing coming.

I woke up the next morning
with a pounding headache that felt like someone was trying to chip my skull
apart one tiny piece at a time—with a sledgehammer.  Like my recurring
nightmare about Jack, I was starting to get used to that pain.  I’d woken up
with a headache every morning since the nightmares had started.  But it wasn’t
just the headache that bothered me.  It was the feeling that came with it.  It
was hard to explain, but it was almost like something really
had
been
crawling around in my skull and had made a quick exit without caring how they
got out. 

Yeah, scary didn’t even
begin
to cover that idea.

I turned over, hoping to get
a little TLC from Nathan only to find the bed next to me was empty.  Pouting, I
buried my face in his pillow, inhaling the last traces of his amazing scent
that still lingered on the pillowcase. 

How pathetic can I get?
I thought, moodily. 
I’ve been reduced to sniffing pillows.

Letting go of the pillow, I
rolled back over and started looking around the room for something else to
focus on besides Nathan and my headache.  Nathan’s room faced the backyard, and
for a second I just stared out at the watery blue sky and tried not to think. 
If I didn’t think, my head just might not explode.

After a few minutes, the
pounding eased enough to become bearable.  Breathing a sigh of relief, I
stretched and tried to enjoy the late morning sunshine flooding the room with a
warm, buttery yellow glow.

Wait.  Late morning?

I was supposed to be at
school!

Kim was going to
kill
me!

I jumped out of the bed as
if it had suddenly become electrified and began to panic.  I was already
pulling on the hoodie I always kept at the foot of the bed, fully prepared to
go to school in the clothes I had on, when I saw the note stuck under my cell
phone next to the bed.  I ran over and snatched it up, trying to breathe
through my panic.

Good morning, Baby.

Take a deep breath and
stop hyperventilating.  Everything is fine, Ember.  Shea called the school and
told them you have the flu.  That ought to buy you a couple of days.  After
last night, we agreed you needed to rest.  Oh, and she’s still here—somewhere. 
Why don’t you see if you can get her to make you some of those waffles you love
so much?   You must be starving.