The rain pounding on my windshield almost snuffs out her voice, but by some miracle, I manage to make out her reply: “Where I hid after Mom…after she died.”
Her father’s storage unit. The one stocked with old fishing and hunting gear.
“What happened?” I growl.
Silence.
“What the fuck happened, Hayes?”
I don’t get my answer until an hour—and far too many minutes—later, when I reach the storage facility and spot blood. I fling the roll-up door of Sullivan Hayes’s unit high, the metal creaking like my stiff joints, then shoulder past her father’s rusted fishing poles.
I stop.
The world goes soundless, ice and fire colliding beneath my skin as I take it all in—my best and only friend curled in the fetal position, cheek pillowed in her own blood.
Chapter 1
Electra
My arms itch—from nerves.
Malachi comes home tonight.
Malachi, who was busy touring the world for the past year to unite our people and form a new council.
Malachi, who I haven’t seen in a year.
I slide my hands under the wide sleeves of my cropped velvet top and scratch. And scratch.
Though I keep my nails blunt, my nervous tic sometimes results in split skin. Granted, I heal almost immediately, thanks to my enchanted blood.
To think my biological mother once convinced me that what ran in my veins carried a life-threatening infection. That if she didn’t drain me of it, I’d die.
I kick her far from my mind, forcing my hands off my arms and flattening them on the bar countertop.
Tonight is a celebration that honors the life-saving drug Lisa Bloom and Tarian Hadez created to defy degenerative disease. Selfishly, I can’t help but hope it will also celebrate the start of my very own epic love story.
Calanthe is a firm believer in manifestation. I get reminded of it almost daily. Even though I roll my eyes at her every timeshe brings it up, behind closed doors, I’ve manifested the shit out of my hopes and dreams: Malachi Hadez finally seeing me as more than a little sister.
It’s one of the reasons I let Calanthe fill my lash line with black crayon and dust my skin with shimmery powder. It’s also one of the reasons I’ve got a skimpy top on. Yes, it has long sleeves, but the fabric cuts off right under my boobs, spotlighting what I consider my best and only asset—my midriff—while Calanthe argues I have many.
My best friend isn’t the most objective judge of character. Loving someone will do that—skew perception and distort shortcomings.
Channeling Calanthe, I murmur, “Tonight is the night I get seen.”
For the trillionth time, I glance toward the vaulted entrance of the gala hall. Although there’s a steady trickle of people, my blond, blue-eyed god isn’t among them.
My nerves act up again. To keep my nails off my arms, I drum them on the bar I’ve been leaning against since arriving an hour early with the Blooms.
“Say cheese.”
A flash goes off in my startled face. Fiona snickers as she returns her cell phone to her jeweled clutch, her veneers flaring as bright as the camera beam that seared my corneas.
“What the hell, Fi?” I grumble.
She perches on one of the low-backed stools shaped like frozen flower bowls, even though they’re nothing more than plastic shot through with rose petals. “Just wanted to immortalize the butterflies. It’s so cute that you’re nervous. He was so nervous too.”
Naturally, my mind jumps to Malachi, but that’s not who Fiona means.
