Fallon hadn’t seenme earlier, sitting there in the corner of The Bean with Beck as we nursed our coffees, going over our theories as to the identity of the thief who stole the books. Fallon hadn’t seen me, but I had been watching her from the dark corner behind my dark mask to hide my dark soul.
She had arrived, wearing black and white leather shoes, those little shorts I’d grown so fond of, the curves of her ass cheeks hitting right at the hem, making my every blood vessel squeeze. She hadn’t seen me, but I’d seen her with her white hair unbound and left to tumble down her back like snowfall. I’d closed my eyes, inhaling the dark thoughts that stroked my shadow-blooded soul, welcoming it like a cold night.
Was this what Dad had warned me about? How could a female, a stubborn one at that, unlock these feelings? These … these cravings? How could she be the only one who could quiet this dark thing inside me?
I had watched her sit across from the douchebag my fist met last night, zoned out and lost in her head like she always seemed to be whenever she was around people she didn’t belong with. I’d never lost control like that, but I was losing her before I ever had her.Good god, what was she doing to me?
But the real question was, who was Fallon Grimaldi?
Kane’s witchery hadn’t worked on Fallon as it did at Voodoos. I had watched from across the lawn during the movie as he felt her up, and if the devil was real, his finger had been tapping on my black lava-filled pulse, ready to pull the trigger.
But it didn’t work on her. She’d said she couldn’t stop thinking about me, and perhaps that was the key.
Beck snapped his finger between us and my eyes tore from the booth she was sitting at just an hour earlier. “You sure you’re okay, man? You’re good?”
“Yeah, what about you? How’s Josephine?” I asked, changing the subject.
Josephine was his Keeper’s daughter, who would eventually become his keeper once her parents passed on. She was only fourteen and had been battling the flu, and it was only getting worse.
Beck’s eyes steered past me. “It’s not looking good. It won’t be long ‘til they need us to step in.”
I leaned over and squeezed his shoulder until his gaze met mine again. “Just like riding a bike, baby Beck. We’ve done this many times, it’ll be fine. If she needs us, we’ll be there. We won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Yeah,” he nodded, blinked worry from his eyes, “Let’s go hit the grounds.”
The grounds were the old carnival grounds built in the early 1900s by a neighboring town, situated on the border of Weeping Hollow—taking up half our woods, the other half in the rest of the world. It had been abandoned after the townies ran the carnies out during a time when the shield was weak, but the grounds were still there, and once a year, the carnival came to life. Moving rides, bright lights, the sounds of children laughing and screaming and singing, and creepy carnival music that could make an RL Stine book seem as if it were written by Disney. Every other night of the year, the grounds were dark and chilling. A quiet place harnessing enough celestial energy to tap into the darkest of magic.
Norse Woods said the last time our coven used dark magic was over a century ago. My brothers and I had never dabbled with dark magic before, and we weren’t planning to tonight. As desperate as we were to break the curse, I refused to fall into the rabbit hole.
No, we only retreated to the grounds when we needed privacy and a location for sex magic because sex was the most potent energy source. Sex with the Norse Woods girls, a haunted carnival, and four Hollow Heathens, you’d think the grounds would sell like hotcakes. But no one aside from our coven knew of its existence. We kept the grounds masked. Sacred Sea nor the flatlanders could see it with a sober eye.
Beck and I walked out of The Bean and trashed our paper cups as soon as Fallon walked across Town Square with the reporter, the little redhead, and Kane on the other side of the gazebo. The view was like a bullet to the lungs, merciless, and killing me slowly.
As much as everyone advised me to stay away, I couldn’t. I wanted to stay inside her head. I wanted her to keep thinking about me if it meant Kane couldn’t get to her.
Life was easier before she’d returned to town, with the cold winds blowing through the broken battlements and casements of my soul. I didn’t mind the cold or the shade I hid under, or being alone with my thoughts, but not when every thought now led to her. It was only torture. I knew she knew it too. There was no denying this thing we had. This thing I had no name for, it felt like magic and read like taboo.
What would it take for me to convince her to live in this secret with me, hide in the alleyways, make out inside the shadows, and make love in the wicked Norse woods after nightfall? Because that was the only life I could give her until I could break this curse.
Fallon didn’t understand. I wasn’t hiding because I was ashamed of her.
I could never be ashamed of her. Fallon and me, we were the same.
But there were other ways I could prove myself …
“PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT!” I called out across town square, too late to stop myself now.
Beck elbowed me at my side. “What the hell are you doing?”
I had no clue, and Fallon’s white hair whipped when she turned her head, the rest of them too. The hardly-crowded streets still had enough witnesses to slam me in the tunnels even though I was still far enough away from her per the orders, and I wasn’t talking directly to her. I didn’t care anymore. I had to make sure she knew how far I was willing to push my limits.
“I WANT TO LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT FALLON!” I shouted, cupping my mouth with my hands and repeating the same words she spoke to me the night before.
Beck shook his head next to me. It was going to take more than this, I knew. But it was a start.BecauseI’ve never been embarrassed by you, Fallon.
Fallon tried to force her smile away, but her smile won. I was more than fifty feet away, farther than I had to be and farther than I wanted to be, and that smile still had the power to hit me in the chest, causing me to step back as if it were a force.And to me, it was.
“YOU’RE STUPID!” she called back, and I tilted my head to the side as a laugh pushed through my lips.
