Treason: Book Two of the Grimoire Saga (a Young Adult Fantasy series) (48 page)

“Take a guess, my dear,” he said, his voice thick with a Russian accent.

“Niccoli?”

He nodded.

“I thought you didn’t run your own errands,” Kara said, glaring at Deirdre.

He grinned. “Is that so? Well, I do run the important ones.”

So the floral note of his cologne had been lilac, and the woody smell had been pine. Kara kicked herself for letting her guard down, but the drinks had dulled her senses. That’s what she’d wanted them to do. She had allowed herself one night of genuine fun because she’d never dreamed that someone would find her. Not in Scotland. Not on such short notice.

Lavender fire erupted around her hands, but the flames barely reached her wrists. Her strength and power were too far away to reach.

Niccoli frowned. “Is that the best you have? I’m disappointed.”

Kara glanced to the exit, trying to figure out how she was going to get out of this mess, but Deirdre clicked her tongue and laughed.

“You really shouldn’t try,” she said.

Niccoli took a step closer. “It wasn’t easy to find you. Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“You want the Grimoire. I’ve heard this a million times. You’re nothing new.”

“I couldn’t care less about that book. It’s useless to me. No, I want you.”

A wave of confusion crashed over her, and the fire in her hands dulled.

“Why?”

“Because you, Kara, are an isen. I couldn’t steal your soul if I tried.”

The flames in her hands went out. Her brow wrinkled. She looked to Deirdre, who frowned in disappointment.

No. That was
impossible
.

Kara’s pulse raced as she tried to process what Niccoli had told her. She wasn’t an isen. She couldn’t be. It was a trick, or just a blatant lie.

Niccoli inched closer. The flames reignited again in Kara’s palms. He shook his head and stopped moving.

“I am not an isen,” she said.

“I couldn’t care less if you don’t believe me. I don’t waste my time. Is the water ready, Deidre?”

“Yes.” She turned off the faucet. A few lingering drops fell from the tap, spreading ripples across the full sink.

“What’s that for?” Kara asked. She needed to get out of here.

Niccoli paused, as if unsure whether or not he should answer. “Being awakened is a painful process, Kara. To turn, you must meet Death. To meet Death, you must die.”

Kara’s throat went dry. These crazy people were going to drown her.

A fresh wave of panic stabbed through her. She raced for the door without another thought or even a plan.

Niccoli grabbed her wrist and spun her away from the exit. Pain shot through her arm at his grip. He pinned her against the wall with her hands over her head. His force kicked the air from her lungs. The flames dancing over her fingers went out with a
hiss.

Deirdre sauntered over with a small wooden box in her hands—the wooden box Kara’s dad had told her to find, all those months ago. Deirdre must have grabbed it. Of course she’d known about it; she’d stolen his soul and with it, his memories.

Kara shot her knee into Niccoli’s gut. He grunted, but the blow hadn’t been enough. His grip tightened. He pressed his thumb against her forehead. A chill began at his touch and coursed through her body, freezing her in place. Her finger twitched, but otherwise, she couldn’t move.

Deirdre smashed the box against the wall and grabbed the small leather item that fell out of it. It was a wrist guard, but with one tweak: a row of small barbs pointed inward, toward where its wearer’s skin would be, in a strange pattern Kara couldn’t recognize.

Deirdre wrapped the guard around Kara’s wrist and pressed on the leather until its spikes dug into her skin. Kara yelled from the pain.

Niccoli covered her mouth with his hand, and the scream died.

He leaned in. “When you’re first awakened, the power will be almost too much to handle. This wrist guard is a training tool that will teach you to control yourself.”

Kara tried to speak, but pain still coursed through her arm. It brought back memories of the spikes Aislynn had used to subdue her. The pain throbbed with every heartbeat.

“Look at me,” Niccoli said.

She glared at him. The edges of his hands covered some of her vision.

He sneered. “You have nothing. Your master is gone. Your book is gone. Your lover, your friends, everything you know—all gone. I am all you have left. Without me, you are utterly alone.”

In response, Kara bit his hand with everything she had.

He flinched and pulled away, cursing in a language she didn’t know. She kicked him hard in his stomach. He curled over, leaning against her as he recovered from the blow.

She leaned in. “I can save myself.”

Heat charged through her body. Purple flames erupted over everything: her hair, her cheeks, her clothes. Niccoli screamed and pulled away, letting her hands go as the flames clung to him. It was enough.

The sprinklers roared to life, dousing the room with indoor rain. The fire on Kara fizzled out as she bolted for the door.

Deirdre lunged, but Kara shot a fist into the isen’s throat without a second thought. Deirdre gagged. Kara threw opened the door and jumped over the stairwell to the floor. She landed with a
thud
. A sharp pain shot up her calf.

A small part of Kara nagged her about how easy it had been to escape Deirdre. The isen couldn’t be taken out by a quick punch, not after everything Kara had seen the terrifying woman do. Yet she’d barely fought. Kara wanted to analyze it, to guess at what Deirdre had up her sleeve, but she didn’t have time. If it meant not being drowned, she would have to run with it.

People raced by, yelling as the sprinklers over the dance floor soaked them. Puddles formed in the dips on the floor. The deejay pulled plugs and threw tarps over his equipment, cursing loud enough for Kara to hear from the other side of the room.

An exit sign blared from under the stairs, so she limped toward it. That was, at least, until a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shadows beneath the stairwell.

She cursed.

“Quiet, Kara! I’m trying to help,” a man said.

In the dim shadows beneath the stairs, she saw the boy from earlier—the one she had mistaken for a moment as Braeden.

She twisted in his grip. “Get away from me! How do you know my name?”

The boy’s skin cracked and peeled, just like Niccoli’s. She cocked her arm to punch him—not
another
isen!—but he grabbed her wrist. She wrestled with him, but it took only a moment longer before she recognized Stone.

She groaned. He let go of her wrist.

“Find her!” Niccoli yelled over the screams from drunken girls getting soaked by the still-pouring sprinklers.

Stone pushed open the door beneath the stairs and gestured through it with a bow. “Unless you’d like to die or be enslaved for eternity, we should probably go.”

Kara nodded. At least she knew
this
isen. He’d helped her once already. Of her limited options, he was her best bet.

She ran through the exit as fast as her limping leg would carry her, but Stone followed at a stroll. His long legs carried him faster than her down the sidewalk, even at his leisurely pace. Kara huffed, half-wishing he would offer her a hand, but she knew better.

They turned a corner, and a sudden realization hit Kara hard enough to make her stop in her tracks.

“Wait! Stone, I need to find my friend.”

“The human you came with? She’ll be fine.”

“But Niccoli—”

“—is after you,” Stone interrupted. “The girl will be safe as long as you stay away from her.”

Kara’s shoulders slumped, but he had a point. Stone began again down the sidewalk, and she forced herself to continue after him.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

He smirked. “By chance, really. I monitor those I don’t trust. Niccoli mentioned a trip to Scotland not long after your stupid boyfriend showed up with the Grimoire and not you. I put two and two together. The rest was luck.”

“The rest? There’s more?”

“I have a hotel room across the street, so we can hide there until Niccoli takes his search back to Ourea,” Stone said.

“You didn’t answer—”

“Would you like a monologue or a place to hide? It’s one or the other at the moment.”

She bit back a retort. “Where’s this hotel of yours?”

“There.” He pointed to a double door entrance with a red carpet out front. A teenager in a red polo shirt sorted through what looked like valet tags while a man in a slim cut suit tapped his foot, waiting.

Stone walked into the hotel without changing his stride and ushered Kara forward by pressing his hand against the small of her back. A clerk behind the black marble welcome desk glanced up and did a double take when he saw them, though Kara had the nagging feeling he was looking at her frizzy hair, smeared makeup, and flushed cheeks. She must have looked like hell.

When they made it to the elevator, Stone pushed the button for the top floor. The elevator chimed, and the motor began to pull them up.

Kara looked over to the isen standing beside her, who slid his hands into his pockets as the elevator climbed. Not even a week ago, she’d walked up to his cave in a freaking
mountain
in a hidden world that wasn’t supposed to exist. They had talked about magic and books and immortal beings. And now, they were on their way to the penthouse after she’d destroyed a nightclub by setting off the sprinklers.

“This is surreal,” she said under her breath.

“Magic has that effect on the young,” he answered.

“I—yeah, I guess.”

“That did not require an answer.”

The doors chimed again. Kara shook her head and followed Stone into an ornate hall. He led the way to a door on the far end and swiped his key card in the lock.

“I prefer real keys, but no, humans enjoy fixing things that aren’t broken,” he mumbled under his breath.

He opened the door and walked in. Kara followed. A full kitchen stood off to her left, a living room filled the space in front of her, and a hallway to the right led down to a few doors that must have been bedrooms or bathrooms.

“Thank you,” she said.

Stone nodded and closed the door.

Kara wanted to add more, to explain that she didn’t know what she would have done without his help, but her head ached. She just wanted sleep.

Stone lifted her chin and examined her eyes, as if looking for something. “How do you feel?”

“Tired.”

Every inch of her body ached. She scratched her wrist. Her fingernails scraped leather. She looked down to see the wrist guard with a trail of blood coming from it.

“I guess I can take this off, huh?” she asked.

She reached for the guard, but Stone grabbed her hand. In a move so fast she barely saw it, he reached for the back of her neck. Something slid into her skin at the base of her head. She gasped, but it came out as more of a choking sound. Numbness spread down to her fingers, her stomach, her toes. Spots dotted her vision.

He had just pricked her spine with the barb in his palm. If she was human, he would have stolen her soul. Niccoli had said an isen couldn’t steal another isen’s soul if he tried, so—she gagged.

Kara really
was
an isen.

“Wh—?” she asked, but it was all she could manage. Her throat closed.

Stone didn’t answer. He picked her up so that her head rested on his shoulder and carried her down the hall. White paint whizzed by. He kicked open a door. Her eyes flitted around and caught only glimpses of a bathroom. Porcelain toilet. Roll of toilet paper with the little fold marking it as unused since housekeeping last visited. Black towels with the hotel insignia.

A bathtub filled with water.

Stone paused at the entry. “I’m going to awaken your isen nature, Kara. It’s a painful process. First, I had to prick your spine—that will rouse the isen instinct within you and give you the strength to fight if you want. But it will also make me your master if you come back. Second, you must be killed, either by suffocation or drowning. I’ve found drowning to be less—impactful.”

No. No, his voice was too calm, as if this was routine and not murder. But she couldn’t speak. Her body wouldn’t move.

He continued. “Third, you will face Death. You must have a reason to return. If you do come back, I will tell you the truth about what you are. You will have unimaginable power. You can save millions. You don’t have to be evil. You can be good, if you want.”

He offered the choice as if it was the same as choosing chocolate over vanilla.

Stone laid her in the tub. Cold water lapped over her ears. She forced her chin up so that she could stay above the water, and a happy pang raced through her when her body obeyed.

But it wasn’t enough. Stone set his hands on her shoulders, face as blank as if he was reading an encyclopedia.

“Ah, one more thing,” he added. “This hurts less if you don’t hold your breath.”

Weight pressed against Kara’s chest as he forced her under. Fear tore through her. She would never avenge her dad. She would never see Twin’s army. She would never hear Flick purr in her ear or make that odd gurgling noise that meant he was happy.

But above all else, she wouldn’t see Braeden again. She’d never get to tell him—

Water rushed into her lungs as she released the breath she didn’t know she was holding.
Oh God,
it was painful. The movies, books, television that describe drowning—they were all wrong. They were too gentle. Drowning was the ultimate death, the most painful of them. Her blood pulsed in irregular beats, thrumming as her heart lost oxygen.

But the panic—that was worst of all.

Her body convulsed, twitching until she lost all feeling. She lost touch with her fingers. Her toes went next. Her lungs stopped trying. Her heartbeat slowed.

Light splintered through the ripples in the water. Stone reached for her pulse, looked at his watch, and stood.

The room blurred. Something pressed against her cheek. Her stomach lifted, like when she used to float in the pool during summer break.

There, the pain hadn’t lasted all that long. At least it was gone now.