“What the fuck?” Donovan says, stumbling back from me. He stares at the stream flowing from the faucet, his face blank with shock.
I seize the opportunity to duck under his arm, heading for the kitchen. There are scissors in the first drawer I open, and I grab them, thinking that if need be, I can use them as a weapon…not against Donovan, but against whatever forces we might find ourselves confronting before we get off this mountain.
Maybe I should leave right now. A smarter person would probably do just that. But I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.
When I finally make it out of the bathroom, there’s a fire blazing in the hearth and Donovan is sitting at the small wooden desk with his laptop open. I pad over to him, swallowed up by his hoodie and sweatpants. I probably look ridiculous, but I don’t care. At least I’m dry.
He shoots me an unreadable sidelong glance, then hooks a second chair with his foot and drags it over. “I’d say I like you wearing my clothes, but I have a feeling we’d just wind up somewhere it’s not a great idea to go, for a shit-ton of reasons.”
“I—”
“Let me finish.” He clears his throat. “I believe you about Cooper, okay? And even though I don’t understand it, I’m starting to agree that there’s something…off. I don’t believe in magic or curses, but the car wreck, that first power outage, the mini-earthquake and the weird blue light, the lake, what justhappened in the bathroom—they all happened when we were together. Once is a good story. Twice is a coincidence. This many times is a data set worthy of analysis.”
Oh, thank God. “So, let’s analyze it, then,” I say, hugging my knees to my chest. “If you trust me about the rest of it, then please trust me when I tell you that there’s something off about Ethan, too.”
Donovan scrubs a hand over his face. “I do trust you, Rune. God knows why, but I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t put myself on the line for you this way. Because what I’ve just done is illegal as hell, and if anyone finds out about it, my job will be the least of the things I’ll lose.”
Those mesmerizing blue eyes of his are fixed on mine, and for once, they’re not icy with rage or burning with desire. This time, their expression is open and sincere. Vulnerable, even, the way they were when he told me about what Cooper had done to him, back before everything between us went so horribly wrong.
He doesn’t believe magic exists. He doesn’t think my premonitions are real. He still thinks there has to be a logical explanation for all this. But he’s willing to take this big of a risk—for me.
No one has ever done anything like that for me before.
I swallow hard, my entire body aching with the urge to throw my arms around him. “Thank you,” I manage to get out. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He tilts his laptop so both of us can see it, his tone all business. “These are the files on Ethan’s hard drive. He had some serious encryption on them, but I was able to break through. From what I can tell, this is the one he accesses most frequently.” His fingers fly over the keys, and some kind of record-keeping system flashes up on the screen. “Look at the names, Rune.”
I lean closer, peering at line after line of text. “Holy crap. Charlotte’s in there, and Mrs. Fontaine, and Cooper, and you, and… Whoisn’tin there?”
Donovan scrolls down the page, his jaw set hard. The list of familiar names goes on and on and on. “These are coded,” he says, gesturing at the screen. “And here—a ton of them have ‘BBB’ in the right-hand column. It’s like he’s been collecting some kind of information on all of us. But what the hell could he possibly?—”
I hold up a hand, cutting him off. “BBB,” I say slowly. “Like, ‘Books, Bites, and Bedlam’?”
“The library fundraiser? What could that have to do with anything?”
I stare at the list of names, revisiting the day of the festival in my mind, walking myself through it step by step. And then, with a sick rush of heat, the answer comes to me.
Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no.
“The blood drive, Donovan.” I jump to my feet. “How could I be so stupid?”
His brow wrinkles in puzzlement. “You mean the mobile van? It was a donation to Sapphire Springs’ blood bank, Rune. There’s no reason to associate…that…with this. It’s protected health information, for one thing.”
I shake my head, my still-wet hair cold against my cheeks, as the full impact of my realization sinks in. “We weren’t donating to the blood bank. We were donating tohim.”
Ethan is a Blood Witch. For reasons I don’t yet understand, he wanted samples from as many residents of Sapphire Springs as he could get his hands on. And the blood drive provided the perfect excuse.
He played us, all of us. And we fed right into his hands.
The codes next to each of our names…they mean something vital. They’re at the heart of why he brought me and Donovantogether, why my parents died and my curse exists, why Donovan’s destined to die at the altar. I feel it in my bones.
This information is the key.
And if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to figure out how to turn it in the lock.
Chapter
Forty-Nine
