“People with omnias magic usually need to be touching someone to see their specific individual future anyway, right?” Hardy grunted. “Would you let her touch you, even if that meant she’d know when you’re going to die?”
Even through the canvas, I could feel the weight of Crowe’s sigh. “She already told me she wouldn’t touch me—said she doesn’t want to know. Honestly, I don’t want to know, either. I have to be able to do whatever’s necessary to keep everyone safe, and if I hesitate or hold back, I won’t be effective.”
“Yeah, brother. I know. We’re all grateful you stepped up after we lost Michael.”
“I can’t let anything distract me from this or slow me down,” said Crowe, his voice steely. “Speaking of—go find Jemmie and keep her out of trouble, will you?”
My eyes were probably the size of dinner plates. What the heck did that mean?
Hardy’s voice was full of laughter as he asked, “Well, is she here yet? You seen her tonight?”
Crowe snorted. “She’s here, all right. Check the beer tent first.”
My face went from cool to blazing in the space of a second.
Crowe’s phone went off. “I gotta take this. I’ll catch up to you later.” He answered the call as he left the tent, headed in the opposite direction of our hiding spot.
We waited a beat for Hardy to clear out, too, before creeping around the tent perimeter and back to the path that would lead to the bonfire. “What a jerk,” I muttered.
“Well, you were headed in there when I found you,” Alex reminded me.
“Screw you. We were going to party, weren’t we? Should we do that in the kiddie tent?” Lori had actually set one up. It was flying a flag with a pink unicorn on it.
“Actually, I am in the mood for some face painting,” she said with a wink.
“Where do you think you two are going?” Hardy said, and Alex and I both shrieked.
“Hardy!” Alex whacked him on the arm. “You scared the shit out of us.”
“How long were you there?” he asked.
I tried acting innocent. “How long were we where?”
“Don’t play me for a fool. I’m a Warwick, remember? Spidey-sense upgrade. I already know how long you were there. I could hear you two mouth breathers for miles. You’re lucky I didn’t tell Crowe.”
Alex and I both cringed. “Then why did you ask?” I said.
“So I could catch you in a lie.” Hardy pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket, selected a number, and hit the Call button. “Hey,” he said when someone picked up on the other end. “If you’re looking for Alex I’m staring at her right now.”
Alex groaned.
“Over by the meeting tent,” Hardy said.
Alex turned to leave, but Hardy stopped her with a strong arm around her midsection, hooking her like a shepherd hooking sheep. Looking relaxed as Alex struggled hopelessly against his iron-muscled arm, Hardy ended the call and said, “Boone is on his way over.”
“And here I am,” Boone said, appearing out of the dim light. Boone was the quintessential biker. Long gray hair tamed into a braid. He wore a blue bandanna around his head and the front of his Devil vest was covered in random patches, everything from a peace sign to a Grateful Dead skull.
“Little banshee,” Boone said, his voice gravelly from smoking far too many cigarettes. “I was just headed for the beer tent. Care to join me?”
“No.”
“She wanted to get her face painted,” I said, not even cracking a smile.
He held his arms out. “Well, that sounds utterly wholesome. After you, then.”
“I don’t even know why I bothered coming tonight,” Alex whined. “This is the least amount of fun I’ve ever had. I don’t need a babysitter, you know.”
“Then think of me as a bodyguard,” Boone said. “Someone messes with the little banshee, they’ll get shot in the ass!” He held up two finger guns, and tiny lightning bolts shot from his fingertips. “Bam! Bam!” He laughed, his beer belly chuckling with him as my nose itched with the scent of his terra magic, fresh-cut greenery and marigolds.
“Oh my God,” Alex said, but she was smiling now. “Fine. Face paint. But you’re getting a flower on each cheek. Jemmie?”
“Actually, the beer tent sounds awesome.” I didn’t want to give Crowe the satisfaction, but if I headed back into the thick of the festival without something to dull my senses, I already knew things were going to get ugly.
Hardy gave me a questioning look, but I could tell the call of the beer tent was strong for him, too. “Okay, fine. We could make a quick stop.”
I nodded solemnly. “What happens in the beer tent stays in the beer tent.”
Alex, who was in the middle of being dragged up the path by Boone, called, “I’ll meet up with you later?”
“Definitely. Can’t wait to see your face art!”
When they were gone, Hardy and I headed for our destination. Rock music pulsed through the earth beneath us and echoed off the forest surrounding us. This was a festival hosted by the Devils’ League after all, and rock music was their anthem. And judging by the din accompanying the music, the festivalgoers were enjoying it, too.
The closer we came to the beer tent and the bonfire, the more crowded it became. The first night of the festival was always the party night, when people reunited after months of not seeing each other, sometimes years, depending on whether they had attended the previous celebration. The second day was for recovery and trading. Those who had spent the night before partying too hard sought out Medici charms for hangovers. And those who had erred on the side of caution shopped for the cuts they’d need throughout the next year. For a lot of people, those cuts were Medici healing ones anyway. It was why the Medicis had their own wares tent, separate from the red tent Alex and I had visited earlier. The demand for Medici cuts was too large to keep to one small table in the main tent.
Once hangovers were nursed and deals were struck, people started to relax, so the third day of the festival was for more partying and lots of reminiscing.
“Hey, Hardy,” one of the lantern girls called as she passed. She gave Hardy an appreciative look, almost setting her hair on fire in the process. A flame skittered along her palm before she squeezed her hand shut and the flame died in a puff of smoke, her dignity right along with it.
If the girl knew a thing about anything, she would have known Hardy rarely swung her way. He’d had two girlfriends in the time I’d known him, which was forever. And seven boyfriends. Or maybe that was eight. He and Crowe were a lot alike in the romance department, save for their choice in departments.
Of course, if she was like most girls, she knew what Hardy’s type was and didn’t give a shit. Sometimes Hardy didn’t, either.
We’d neared the beer tent, where people had started to gather. Headlights swept into the east field as new arrivals searched for parking spots. It was a dizzying, blinding dance of light and sound. Dense and smelling of steel and earth and fire, powerful magic crackled at the edges of my vision, threatening to close me in. I quickened my steps, sliding past groups of people in the hope of reaching my relief.
I ducked inside the beer tent, and Hardy followed. We wended our way through the tables quickly filling with people. Magic was so thick in here that I could barely see.
At the bar, Hardy ordered a shot of whiskey and I ordered a shot of tequila, because why not. The bartender, a Niklos by the smell of him, poured the shots and slid them our way. “Enjoy,” he said, and tipped his head to both of us.
“Cheers,” Hardy said, but by the time he raised his glass, I’d already downed mine. He let out a low whistle. “Damn.”
“It’s medicinal,” I said quickly, waving for another.
“Fine, but then you take a little break, all right?”
“You’re the boss.”
He grunted. “Obviously.”
I slung my second shot back just as I caught sight of my dad entering the tent. “Great,” I muttered. “My
night is complete.”
Hardy leaned back, propping his elbow on the bar top. “What? Oh. Never mind. I see him.”
“Owen!” someone shouted, and waved Dad over to their table. Others followed his progress with a mixture of disdain and fear. He might have a few fans here, but joining the Syndicate had earned my dad a lot of enemies, too.
Hardy let me order a beer, maybe feeling sorry for me, and we watched the crowd swell over the next half hour. My limbs had taken on a pleasant tingle. The magic was still filling my nose and fogging my vision, but I no longer cared all that much.
“Huh. Didn’t expect to see her here,” Hardy commented, and I turned to look, craning my neck.
Old Lady Jane sat on a chair at the far end of the tent, surrounded by people gathered at her feet. Brooke, the Devils’ League member assigned to guard Jane, was positioned in the corner, her eyes scanning the crowd. She inclined her head when she saw Hardy at the bar, and he did the same. A few other, older kindled were also in chairs near Jane, and one of them, a man with a stringy steel-gray ponytail and neck tattoos, was standing up, gesturing as he spoke.
“Let’s go check it out,” I said. “I’m bored.”
Before Hardy could issue an opinion on the matter, I got up and staggered a little as I made my way over to the lawn-sitters. Once there, I plopped down next to a few girls wearing Curse King colors—orange and black.
“—and when she woke up to find the sun shining, she thought she had broken the curse!” the old guy was saying. “But then she ran back to her village and discovered that only a few houses were standing. The rest were overgrown with weeds, thatch caved in.” He glanced back at Jane. “With time.”
“That’s why you never cross a Vetrov,” said Jane with a tiny, dry smile. “Some of us can steal minutes, days, even years.”
“Not the only reason you never cross a Vetrov, from what I understand,” the man said, smiling. “But that’s what it was. The crone had stolen forty years from the girl! Her sisters were old women and her parents were dead. The girl was crushed. She went to go find the old woman whose bread she’d stolen, but of course she was gone, too. So the girl wandered for the rest of her days, calling for her lost years, unable to bear the burden of the future.”
“How fucking depressing,” Hardy muttered as he scooted in behind me. “Do I really have to listen to this?”
Old Lady Jane stood up. “Time to hear the tale of the girl who bound the devil,” she said, and Hardy shut up fast.
Jane’s long white hair swished as she turned her head slowly and took in each person in her audience. “This one is a part of our ancient heritage, and it was told to me by my grandmother, whose grandmother told it to her. She begged me not to ever let it die. She promised me that if I told this tale at our gatherings, the magic of it would live forever. So here I stand.” She paused to sip her beer, then raised her cup. “And here’s to Granny Vetrov!”
Several people raised their cups and drank with her. I drained my own cup and set it in my lap.
“The tale is this,” Jane continued. “Centuries ago, in Scotland, the devil came to call in the village of Dunkeld. The moon hid its face from him, and so did the sun, and the whole town fell into the deepest kind of darkness. No lantern or torch could stand against it. No one in the village could see, and they stumbled about, crying out in fear. None of them could feel him creeping closer—until it was too late. And when he put his arms around one of them, they clung to him, so glad they weren’t alone anymore. They thought he was a hero, come to save them.” Her eyes met mine, and a chill slid right down my spine.
The corner of Jane’s mouth twitched, maybe with amusement. “So he took each of his victims in his red embrace, and none of them could escape his hold once he had them. No matter what power they had on this earth, he knew how to turn it against them. One by one, they fell. And that devil, he loved every minute of it. He wanted to devour the world.”
I rubbed my arms, trying to smooth sudden goose bumps even though the air was warm.
“Is she always this freaky?” Hardy whispered.
“Shut up,” I whispered back.
“But there was one villager who wasn’t caught in the darkness,” Jane continued, now lost in her story. So lost, in fact, that she wasn’t holding her cup upright anymore. It hung from her fingers, dripping beer onto her scuffed motorcycle boots, but everyone was too rapt to call her attention to it. “Her name was Nora, and she had been banished from this village by the sea for stealing crabs from the fishermen’s nets. The people of Dunkeld wouldn’t stand for such thievery, and they’d cut off her hands and sent her into the forest to starve.”
Old Lady Jane was wearing a big smile now, and it was straight out of a freaking horror movie. “But Nora did not starve. She was a willful girl who refused to relinquish her life, and she lured little beasts with her singing and then caught them in her teeth.”
“The fuck?” muttered Hardy.
“Shhh.” I glared at him over my shoulder.
Jane’s teeth were bared, yellowed by years of chain-smoking. “As the sun rose, she saw that a strange darkness had fallen over the little town that the light couldn’t pierce, but instead of staying put or running away, she walked right toward it. And there was the devil, sitting in the village square with his victims laid out in a circle.”
“How could she see him, if it was so dark in the village?” asked one of the Curse King girls with a smirk, clearly thinking she was poking holes in Jane’s story.
“She could see through that dark,” Jane answered. “Nora was aware of the murk around her, but her eyes were especially keen. Too keen. She saw the devil for what he was. She saw the trails of love and hate and lust and power dangling from his mouth, and she knew she’d caught him at his breakfast.” Her eyes met mine again. “He was eating their souls, you see.”
My stomach turned.
“Nora had been horribly mistreated by these villagers, and the devil knew it. He invited her to join him at his feast. And because she had no hands, he even offered to feed her.”
Now the silence around Jane was complete, and her cup was empty. It fell from her knobby fingers and landed on the grass next to her boot. “Nora was tempted. These were the people who turned her out to die. These were the people who had cut off her hands. They had hurt her. But she knew the devil was no hero. She could see him eyeing her dreams and her will and her bravery and her rage like a starving man. She could see that he would eat her soul, too. She could also see there was no escape, for he was well fed and fast on his feet. So she did the only thing that was left to her.”
Here, Jane paused, and as she turned I caught the glittering silver wisps of her magic, slowly swirling around her head. I could smell it, too—the scent of iron fresh from the forge. I shuddered. Jane seemed to catch the movement and tilted her head, her gaze on me once again. “Do you know what she did, Jemmie Carmichael?”
Heads turned toward me. “No,” I said, shrinking from the sudden attention.
“She gathered up the strands of those souls in her arms, and she used them to bind herself to that devil. She had no fingers to tie knots, so she twisted and turned and wound them tight around her body and his. Then she hurled herself into the sea and dragged him with her.”
“Did she survive?” I asked.
“What a question,” said Jane. “Of course she didn’t.”
For some reason, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
“And that’s the story. There’s magic in it, my grandmother told me. It lives as long as the story does.”
After a few moments of hush, someone started clapping, and then a few others did. The elderly guy scooped Jane’s beer cup from the grass and shouted to the bartender to fetch her another. My ears were ringing as I pushed myself off the ground and headed for the exit.
“I need some fresh air,” I managed to tell Hardy as I stumbled forward without waiting for him. It felt a little like being underwater, breathless, and clawi
ng desperately for the surface. Just as I could see my escape through the crack between the tent flaps, they were pulled aside, and I found myself face-to-face with Killian Delacroix, president of the Deathstalkers.
His eyes searched my face, and then he smiled. “Speak of the devil,” he said quietly. “And she shall appear.”
EIGHT
“WHAT—” I BEGAN, LOOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER TO THE open air outside. A few hulking Deathstalkers stood just beyond the tent flaps.
“Someone told me you were here,” Killian said blandly.
“Who?” I asked. Was it Darek? And if so, how much had he said? My cheeks flared with heat.
Killian said nothing, thereby amplifying my curiosity and my fear. If he said something about me and Darek in front of Hardy—
“Excuse me, Killian.” I started to edge past him, wanting to escape, but he put a hand on my arm.
“Wait.”
“Get your fucking hands off her,” snapped Hardy, who’d caught up with me. His eyes narrowed with promised violence.
Fingers still circled around the crook of my elbow, Killian said, “I mean no harm,” in his sweet, honeyed Louisiana drawl. My nose filled with the scent of copper and salt as crimson ribbons of magic unfurled around him and licked at Hardy’s cheeks.
“Okay,” said Hardy. “Fine.” He didn’t sound happy, but he no longer looked like he was ready to throw Killian into orbit.
The worst thing about Killian, if you asked me, was that he didn’t look formidable on the outside. He was wearing his vest that marked him as a Deathstalker, but he seemed small and meek and forgettable. Close-fitting jeans underscored how skinny he was. Round, tortoiseshell glasses sat on the bridge of a nose that seemed just a tad too small to hold them. His dark brown hair was combed over to the side, tamed by hair product with a slight sheen. More nerd than badass—except he’d just stopped Hardy in his tracks with a mere thought.
“I was just about to go greet your father,” Killian said to me. “Would you like to join us?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father on his feet, watching us. The room had gone silent. The air, stagnant. Outside, I could hear kids playing, screeching and laughing, unaware of the tension growing in the tent. What I wouldn’t give to be a child again, oblivious to this world we lived in. Instead, I was stuck between Hardy and Killian, watching Killian’s power slide toward me, knowing I was about to accept an invitation I was desperate to reject.