My eyebrow arches. “Why else?”
This time he doesn’t throw his beak in the air or roll his eyes or anything of the sort. He looks concerned. He points with a long-tipped wing. “That’s where the door should be. It’s beensitting under that brush for as long as I’ve been alive and my grandparents and their grandparents before them. Not once has it just disappeared, and the night that Embry is to learn the secret, and you enter the Mystic Forest, it vanishes into thin air?”
“All these riddles, just tell me what the fuck is going on, bird.”
Now he throws an eyebrow to the sky. “What’s the magic word?”
I’m going to wring his fucking neck. He’s going to be somebody’s meal tomorrow if he doesn’t tell me how to find Embry. And then like magic the door with a large W appears where not two seconds ago, it did not.
My jaw tightens as I approach the door, ready to fucking bust that thing down. A sacred witches’ cavern with a vampiress whose heart belongs to someone else and crosses the line of propriety in my position, but the thought of not following Embry beyond that door doesn’t even cross my mind.
If she was drawn here again, it has to be the work of those pesky witches. She wouldn’t come here on her own, unless… No, her gramma is dead. Descallia confirmed she died the night her intervention almost single-handedly saved the vampires.
I raise my fist to beat on that ornate door with the W carved in, a door as a vampire I’m sworn never to enter. A teary-eyed Embry with black mascara running down her face opens it before my knuckles connect with the wood. She steps into my arms, holds onto my waist and buries her face in my chest sobbing, inviting me in. “Come in. Just hold me, Corvinus.”
My eyes scan the surroundings for danger, and then I lift her, cradling her in my arms as I kick the door closed behind us and carry her to the bed on the far side of the room. The one we shared before leaving the Mystic Forest and staying with Master Romano and Raven. I draw her close and pull a quilt from the bed to warm her trembling body. I hold her, letting her spill allthe emotions of the day onto my chest until her body calms in my arms. I stroke the soft skin of her face. “Tell me what’s going on, love?”
She sniffs and wipes her eyes as she looks up at me. “Gramma is dead.” She lets out a little half sob. “I know it’s silly, but for a while, I really thought she may be alive. That somehow, she led me here and she was actually alive.”
I stroke her silky hair, caressing her neck while just holding her in my arms. “What you felt wasn’t silly, love. I half wondered myself what was going on. I mean, given the situation I almost thought maybe she was a witch. I mean she led you here, right? How does she have access to a witch’s cavern? So many things led me to think that way.”
She nods, and sniffs again. “I know, and that would make me a witch.”
I grin. “Somehow I’d deal.”
Embry’s eyes widen. “She may be dead, but we can communicate. I have the power of sight that she had, like Lucianna and others. Somehow, I knew it, just couldn’t until lately harness it, at least like this, you know? I mean Raven and I can communicate, just not the same. Raven was here before you.”
I recall the grins that passed between them at Romano’s house. Little sneaks. I stroke a finger down the side of her cheek and trace her warm lips. “Raven, what did she say? I couldn’t find the cavern or I would have been here sooner. I swear it wasn’t here and then just reappeared.” And now I have a sneaking suspicion why. Raven wanted the time alone, she asked for it, and I was trying to get in the way. “What did she say?”
“She’s going to be okay, Corvinus. Devora will rant and rave once she finds out, but Raven did what she felt was right. I can’t believe I was ever so upset with Raven, with the others. They always trusted me, Corvinus. Raven proved that tonight.Lucianna and Willow, Madria, all came for me. Even if I couldn’t talk to all of them yet, they cared enough to show up.”
I’ve tried to tell her time and time again but it took them showing her trust and love to finally make her see. But her next words surprise even me. “Maybe Devora will come around and leave us alone if we leave for Chicago.”
My jaw tightens. The devious witch turns hot and cold like no one I’ve ever seen. “You can’t trust Devora for a minute, no matter that Descallia and the Masters of the Consulate wanted to keep the peace. Whatever secret she’s keeping, it’s probably going to mean war.”
Embry’s face falls. “Because of me?”
I take her in my arms. “No, love. Because you simply can’t trust that she’ll keep her end of the bargain. Whatever it is. How many times throughout the centuries has she done the same thing? Promised one thing to our faces only to be using the time to create her little potions, hexes and spells. Devora’s crossed the line one too many times for me. She’s hiding something and it could be detrimental to the vampires. I can’t have it, Embry. There’s no coming back from this for her. You understand? We figure out what the secret is, and we give it to Descallia.”
I do not expect the immediate agreement or the passion that flares from her now reddened eyes. “I already know. That witch is guarding the secret of the shadow books because she knows it will give the true owner of the sacred land away. We just have to figure out the riddles of the shadow books. But the ladies, Lucianna, Raven, Willow, and Madria and the others, they can help if we go back to Chicago.”
“How do you know that for sure?” Not much surprises me but this certainly does.
“Because Raven gave me the shadow books. She went back for them and brought them to me.”
Embry suddenly shifts out of my arms and sits up in bed. “I know you’re going to think I’m crazy. I just told you that Gramma is dead, but she was here, Corvinus. Really here, you know. Her spirit, I have the same powers that my gramma, and her gramma and her gramma before her had. I really am a psychic. I just needed the right reason to activate it. I could feel her, hear her and understood everything she wanted me to know. Well, with the exception of a couple things.”
The beating of Embry’s heart begins to slow. She is running low on blood, had too little to eat earlier, used too much energy, and suffered so much emotional toll. Her eyelids flutter slightly, too heavy for her to keep them open without effort. “It’s time to feed you, love.” She watches through slitted lids while I carve a deep line into the vein of my wrist. “Drink, love,” I tell her, bringing the nourishing sustenance to her lips, watching her partake of the dark crimson blood she needs so desperately.
When she’s had her fill, I wrap my wrist in a torn piece of my long white shirt. “Rest love. When we wake, we’ll meet with Descallia and Lucianna, tell them what we know and decide what we need to do.”
She shakes her head gently, but even with fresh blood, Embry is going to need time to heal, time to regain her energy after letting it deplete so low. “Shadow books,” she says, right before she drifts off into a deep and tranquil sleep.
My mind drifts back to the first day I met the little spitfire, and how I cussed destiny’s name for her little matchmaking games. Now, I can’t imagine life without her. But getting her back to Chicago so I can make her forget about all of her troubles is proving harder than I intended. These shadow books were supposed to be easy. Get in, grab them, and get out.
I stroke Embry’s cheek while she sleeps. “One way or another, even if it takes me the entire year, you are going to be mine. Damn all these secrets, shadow books, and witches tohell.” I decide right now that tomorrow we’re going home, back to Chicago. Away from here and all the games the evil little witches play.
12
