Chapter Six

 

 

I gripped Cadence’s arm as I forced my eyes closed. I knew by now the truck was a solid ice cube.

“What? What! You’re going to freeze me to death,” Cadence said with a degree of annoyance.

“Across the street. Look.”

A second later, I heard, “That’s kinda odd.”

“What!” I gasped, opening my eyes. I didn’t see my dead sisters; I saw two falcons on the sidewalk. As if they knew they were seen, they took flight.

“That’s not what I saw,” I said with a tremble.

“Okay…what’d you see?”

“Abby and Lisa.” I could not hide the ache in my voice.

Cadence pulled the mirror down so she could see the security that was parked behind us. “Freaking A. I told you, didn’t I? She’s messing with your head. And I would bet money those guards have been paid double. If you’re not careful, she’s going to break you.”

I took in a few rapid breaths. I felt like I was losing my mind. I knew I’d seen them. I was a thousand percent sure. Cadence wasn’t off base, though. More than once, Rasure had claimed that I was too mentally unbalanced, still in shock with grief; she knew exactly how to push my buttons.

“Come on,” Cadence said as she opened the truck door and slid out.

I balled my fists, then followed.

Inside the shop, Mason was at the bar with Gavin next to him. Wilder was behind it, and there was a writer in the corner. Besides that, the place was deserted.

I briskly walked the length of the bar. “Is it bar time?” I asked, not really wanting an answer.

I circled the bar, pulled out a shot glass, poured it full of whisky, and swallowed it whole, feeling the warmth slide down my throat, the harsh ease that followed it. This was the first drink I’d had since that wild summer with Mason, so only beats after that I felt a few of my uptight inhibitions slip away. The idea that I would have to lose control to find it again dared me to take another shot.

Gran’s image flashed in my thoughts. I didn’t want her to wake up only to see me go down a dark road that she steered me away from so long ago but I needed some courage right now, and I was sure it was at the bottom of the shot glass in my hand. “If not, it is now,” I said with a gasp, finally tasting how horrible the whisky was and remembering why I hated that drink of choice. I could swear razor blades were gutting my throat.

“I thought we were dry until next month?” Mason said as he twirled a toothpick in his hand and his concerned eyes rapidly danced across my face.

“Guess not. Pour me one,” Gavin said, only to catch a glare from Cadence.

I saw the guards getting out of the huge SUV. They’d parked and were making their way in. If I wanted another shot, I had to take it now. So I poured it, telling myself that I needed to face the grief that that vision in the parking lot had ignited. It felt like they died yesterday, the pain was that real.

Once the glass hit the bar, Wilder took it away. His blue eyes met mine for the first time in months. “What’s going on, D?” he whispered.

When I didn’t answer, he urged me back into the hall that was out of the common view of the shop.

I didn’t want to look up at him. I didn’t think I could handle it. He pulled my chin up as a gasp of fog that reeked of whiskey seeped from my lips.

“You’re cold…and getting colder by the second,” he murmured, looking into my eyes.

I took in a deep breath, smelling the rich scent of lilies that always seemed to linger oddly close to his skin.

“I told you I was cold hearted. Tell me you remember that.”

Instantly, he had my arms pinned over my head. “And I told you I didn’t care how cold you were.” He breathed against my neck, which made the entire hall turn to ice for an instant. “When are you going to get off this stage and let me see the real D?” Wilder always had to be different. The ‘in’ before the ‘d’ in my nickname was just too much for him to say.

One glance to his arm revealed a jagged gash. “What did you do to your arm?” I gasped as I averted my gaze, regretting those shots I took. If I was going insane, I wanted to be sober when that happened.

“Slipped on the snow, glass was on the ground.”

I broke free from him and crossed my arms. This was shaping up to be one of the weirdest days of my life. How could one dream predict two different wounds on my friends?

“I’m the reason you’re drinking,” Wilder stated. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I heard pride in his tone.

“Don’t tell me you became cocky while you were out on the lam. I’ve had a bad day, followed by a sleepless night.”

“Sleepless, huh? You and Mason hooking up again? I heard he held you last night.”

I glared up at him. “What do you guys have—some kind of Indie survival club or something? Mason knows what we are. He was a friend when I needed one.”

“Survival club—really?” he said with that trademark smirk of his that enhanced his oh-so-kissable lips. I couldn’t help it. I breathed in again. His scent had always reminded me of the fragrance of spring, breaking warmth.

“I don’t like it when you guys talk about me. Pass tips on how to handle me.”

“Well, I don’t get why we can’t be friends. Why you treat me different than Gavin and Mason.”

“Because they’ve moved on.”

“You think I haven’t?” he asked as his blue eyes pierced through me.

I felt my insides cave in. The whisky was definitely wreaking havoc on my empty stomach and coursing directly into my bloodstream. “I heard rumors…but you never said.”

“You never asked,” he said as he tilted his head and gazed down at me with that signature wonder he always carried when he stared at me. I hated that look. In my eyes, it confirmed that I was nothing more than a challenge to him, that once I gave in, he’d make a notch on his bedpost and be gone.

“How long have you guys been hooked up?” That was my cold reminder that I wasn’t falling for his charm.

“This girl, a few weeks.”

“‘This girl,’” I repeated as I began to slide away from him.

“A few. It’s been a year, D.”

“I know,” I said, looking away, feeling somewhat betrayed. I wasn’t really surprised at the ‘few’ part. Wilder had this essence about him, one that was all man, completely seductive. That, along with his charm, that artistic flame that rippled through his piercing stare, was more than alluring to the female species. He told me once that he’d never had a relationship with anyone that lasted as long as ours, and we never even got started. I felt played. He was texting me nearly every day while hooking up with other girls.

“You never asked,” he said, as if he’d read my expression. “And whether this thing I got going on works out or not, I know this isn’t going to work the way I want it to.”

“And exactly how do you want this to work?”

“I want to be in your life the way Mason and Gavin are. You want me there, too, even if you won’t admit it.”

Wilder had always had this thought, or saying. He claimed we were destined, that I had already belonged to him. I never believed a word of it. Out of the three of them, I was always more guarded around him. I didn’t like how aware of me he seemed to be, not in a sweet way, but in a judgmental way, one that made me feel like we were not building a relationship but outlining a battlefield.

“Then learn to give me my independence.”

“Yeah, that worked well for Mason and Gavin. Those two have never said no to you. You want somebody to challenge you. Admit it.”

“I do. I want someone to push my mind, body, and soul to the limits. I want them to never let me forget how passionate every second of life is. I want someone I trust enough to follow and man enough to let me lead. Most of all, I want someone I can stand beside as we change the world. Someone who can help me ease the agony in this dark, cold world. I want a Falcon.”

I wanted Sebastian Falcon, but I wasn’t about to admit that aloud.

I never even thought about what I really wanted, and the last thing I wanted to do was admit that juicy tidbit to Wilder. There was no telling what he would do with that confession.

“Not everything that is cold is wicked, D.”

I raised my chin, cutting off his building speech that would try to convince me that I was not cursed, just different. “Friends,” I said to point out our current relationship status.

He smirked as he shook his head. “God help the man that does break the ice shield you hide behind.” His smile faded as our stares locked and that wonder filled his eyes once more. “There is no telling what’s deep down inside of you.” He let his words settle over me, then said, “Anyone I should be cheering on now?”

“No. Too focused on Rasure.”

He crossed his arms. “You are going to have to find somewhere else to place all this aggression.”

He hated Rasure as much as I did but didn’t see her as a threat. More than once, he told me I just needed to ignore her and wait it out.

“I’ll worry about that when it’s over,” I said as I remembered the info I had in my back pocket. “I gotta talk to Gavin.”

“Of course,” he bit out as I pushed past him.

Sophia had showed up for her night shift. She was tying on her apron, staring out at the bar. “You told him, didn’t you?” she whispered to me.

I knew she was talking about me mentioning her crush to Mason. “It may have come up, why? Did he say something?” I asked, glancing over this innocent girl who was more than likely too naïve to be in a relationship with my crazy summer boy.

“No, it was just the way he looked at me when I came in,” she said as her nervousness made itself apparent in her tone. “This isn’t going to be, like, weird between us, you know, if it goes anywhere? I don’t want to lose you as a friend over a crush.”

“You won’t,” I swore.

Her cheeks blushed just before she moved past me and started setting up for the night crowd.

Gavin was still sitting by Mason at the bar. Both of them were trying to read Wilder as he came out of the hall behind me.

I put the paper on the bar and slid it over to Gavin. “I need you to figure this out.”

“And this is...?” he asked with curiosity piqued.

“I developed the film.”

“Really?” Mason said as he leaned forward and tried to catch my gaze.

“Yeah. Anyway, there were pictures of Rasure on there, like, really old ones, and she looked the same. Either it’s her and I’ve officially gone mad, or everyone in her family looks the same. Regardless, my birth mother knew her.”

“Told you she was a demon,” Gavin said as he tapped the paper on the bar before sliding his seat back. He moved one space down next to Cadence, who already had her laptop open.

I glanced past Mason to the guards that were seated at the table by the door. I offered a nod. Just as I was about to ask if they wanted some coffee or something, the chime on the door introduced a new patron.

She was our age. Her hair was so blonde that it was almost white. She had it pulled back tightly, and the collar of her red pea coat was pulled up. It enhanced the fire engine red lipstick she was wearing. Everything about her was alluring. I wasn’t surprised that Gavin and Mason let their glances linger longer than they should have, but I was surprised to see Wilder walk around the bar to greet her.

I felt my stomach turn, my skin blush, and the ice form under my gloves. I reached for the coffee pot under the shelf of the bar and made my hands stay there. I couldn’t lose control, not in front of people I didn’t know.

Wilder walked right up to her, and she reached her arms around his neck and eased her body against him, whispering something in his ear as she caught my stare. He looked uncomfortable, not because of her touch, but because I was in the same room.

“Looks like somebody forgot to tell Wilder rule number one thousand and sixty,” Mason joked.

Gavin looked up from his work and smirked. “The most important one.”

“And what rule is that?” I asked, relieved I had something else to focus my attention on.

“Never bring the ‘next’ girl around Indie without warning,” Mason answered.

“But that rule is null and void if she is the one that hooked you up with her,” Gavin said, raising his hand as if he were declaring it. Cadence elbowed him, but he only vaguely acknowledged the blow. He was staring at me, trying to see if I was really upset. I shook my head no once.

“So I hear,” Mason said as his charismatic stare caught Sophie’s as she set a fresh cup of coffee in front of him. She blushed again and then walked away.

“All right. That’s enough. I’m declaring an official end to the Indie Survival Club. I can’t stand that you guys talk about me. It makes me feel cheap.”

The playfulness both Gavin and Mason had been talking with evaporated immediately. “That is the last thing you should feel like,” Mason said, leaning closer to me, reaching for my arm. “Closed club. Promise.”

Gavin moved down a seat closer to Mason. “Indie. It’s not a club. If it was, it would just be Mason and me, and we just don’t want anyone to hurt you or push you. We knew if you found out Wilder wanted to meet you and we blocked him that you would take it the wrong way, see us as obsessed or something. We just never expected you to let him in so fast. He’s not really your style.”

“I didn’t let him in. And I thought that it might work because you guys introduced me to him.”

Gavin’s eyes filled with concern. “You like him?”

I shook my head no once, knowing that was the truth. I didn’t like him the way I should. I knew that. I wasn’t jealous of him. I was jealous that another girl saw him for what I couldn’t, that she could touch him and not worry about freezing him to death.

I saw both Gavin and Mason breathe out.

“What do you guys know? I already figured out this is not the first girl that has been keeping him warm over the last few months. I let him go.”

They glanced at each other, then to me, giving me the impression that I wasn’t even close to the mark concerning what they were thinking or knew.

“What?”

“Just a gut feeling,” Gavin said under his breath as he glanced out the window to the empty snow-covered streets. “You say the word, and we’re out of here. I don’t like how she showed up out of nowhere, or that he is messing with you.”

Mason angled his phone at Gavin, as if to show him the time. He received a quick nod from Gavin before he glanced out the window again.

What was with the two of them?

“Wilder doesn’t have me rattled. I think it’s the dream I had last night. This day just feels off to me. Almost like everyone is either in place or out of place. My emotions are just on high alert.”

Gavin reached to squeeze my hand. His eyes questioned where my scarf was before he spoke. “We are going to figure this out, one way or another. I’m already on it.”

Mason nodded once to agree. I wasn’t sure what they were trying to unravel or why they didn’t seem to be hiding their protectiveness anymore. I mean, hell, if looks could kill, Cadence would have taken Gavin down the first second he moved away from her to talk to me.

“Don’t let me drag you into my hell. I think it’s almost over anyway.”

They glanced at each other before looking back at me. “It feels like it’s just starting,” Gavin said, almost to himself as he glanced over his shoulder at Wilder.

Wilder had somehow managed to get his girl to leave, but not before kissing her tenderly in front of all of us.

He avoided my stare as he walked back to the bar. The glances from the guys confirmed his fear that that was not a good thing to throw in my face. I mean, he could have at least introduced her to us.

I put up the front that I didn’t care as I acted like I was busy straightening up things. A beat or two later, I smelled the rich scent of lilies and glanced up to see Wilder just behind me. In my ear he whispered, “I didn’t plan that. Wasn’t ready for you to see it. Sorry.”

I glanced back at him and gave him a stiff nod before moving back to where Mason was. I halfway thought he was just trying to get a rise out of me. But like I said, I was more jealous of the ‘normal’ girl he’d found than the sight of her in his arms.

A familiar whisk of air swooshed through the room, producing Skylynn on the stool next to Mason. On reflex, I glanced to the guards, then to the writer in the corner to see if they noticed her sudden appearance. They gave no evidence that they did, but she’d stolen Cadence and the guys’ attention.

“Just to be clear, you see someone sitting next to Mason?” I said under my breath where only they could hear me.

“Of course they see me. They’re not blind,” Skylynn said as she pushed Gavin’s empty shot glass forward. “I’ll take one of these.”

“Everyone, Skylynn. Skylynn, everyone,” I said with insolence as I poured her a shot. Now, after all this time, she shows herself.

Wilder leaned over the bar in front of Cadence, and the two of them started a quiet conversation. I’m sure they were trying to figure out why they were now as insane as I was.

Mason wasn’t bothered by it at all. His chocolate eyes were drinking in Skylynn. Gavin’s eyes just moved between the two of us, trying to figure out why I was mad at my imaginary friend that had come to life before their eyes.

Skylynn slammed the glass down and turned sharply on her seat to face Mason. “You’re a twin.”

“Yup,” Mason said as all the allure left his eyes. She’d just called out his weakness, the loss of his brother.

“He played music, like you. Was it the drums?”

Mason smirked. “He wishes. Guitar and vocals.”

“Fanfreakingtastic,” Skylynn muttered as she asked me for another shot with the wave of her hand. I gladly poured it. I’d never seen her drink or lose her serious composure. I guess today was a day full of firsts.

She sipped this one at first, then swallowed it whole. “Tell me this,” she said, leaning into Mason. “Did anyone ever mistake you for each other? Not anyone. Did anyone special mistake you for the other?”

Mason bit his bottom lip as his gaze fell into hers. I glanced back to make sure Sophia’s attention was somewhere else, but the lavender blonde had captured her attention, too.

Mason leaned forward as he let a devious smile echo on the corners of his lips. “If anyone bothers to get close enough to a twin and looks into their eyes, they will see that the souls could not be mistaken for one another.” He leaned a little closer. “A special person would never question it, not if they knew us at all.”

Sounded like a logical answer to me, but all it did was seem to make Skylynn mad, maybe even sad, one of the two. I purposely handed the whisky bottle to Wilder, who was a few feet away from me. She’d had enough, apparently.

Skylynn locked eyes with me as she turned to face the bar. “He needs to move.”

“What?” I said with a smirk. Mason was totally not coming on to her, he was just using his charisma to hide the pain.

“Move. Over. Out. Up. Down. I don’t care. He just needs to move.”

“What has gotten into you?” I asked her with an astonished gaze.

She leaned over the bar so only I could hear her. “I’ve had a really bad day. It will only get worse if he doesn’t move. I’m not in the mood for a jealous temper tantrum.”

“He’s the most peaceful one of all of them,” I assured her, knowing he would not care what she had to say to me and wouldn’t even bother to steal my attention away from her.

“It’s not him I’m worried about. He smells like you. Make him move.” She glanced down at my wrist that was missing one very important scarf. “I’m trying to protect you. I thought that’s what you wanted. Needed.”

I couldn’t figure out why she wanted him to move, but I gave in, for Sophie’s sake. She had it bad for Mason, and now that Mason knew he was driving Skylynn mad he would continue to do so and never even know he was hurting the girl that had a crush on him.

Skylynn slid back down on her stool. I edged over in front of Mason. “Will you play me something?” I asked as sweetly as I could.

“Seriously?” he asked with a smirk, not believing I took her side.

I tilted my head in Sophia’s direction. “Don’t hurt her. She knows I told you.”

He leaned forward, holding my gaze. “I told you she was too naïve for me,” he whispered.

“Don’t be cold. I’ll forgive you for the Indie Club if you at least be nice. Tell her you’re not interested if you’re not, but don’t play with Skylynn in front of her.”

“Play?” he said in his familiar flirtatious tone.

“Go,” I insisted as I tried not to blush the way he wanted me to.

He pushed back from the bar. “Hey, Sophia. It’s slow. Do you want to learn how to play the drums?”

You would have thought that he asked her to run away with him. She beamed as she walked around the bar so she could follow him to the side of the room where the stage was.

Pretending that she needed to take Sophia’s place, Cadence edged around the bar and came to where I was standing.

“Smells like me? Really?” I muttered, looking at Skylynn.

She held up her shot glass, asking for more.

“Nope. You’re already acting weird.”

“Coffee, then. Why not?” she said with an exhausted smile. You would think it was the end of the world for Skylynn, that she saw no reason to have manners or inhibitions. It was sad, really. I wanted my friends to know the angel that had saved my life so many years ago, the angel that had kept me sane all these years.

Cadence poured her a cup. When she handed it to her, she said, “I always imagined you...I don’t know. Nicer.”

“I’m nice when I keep good company. Lately, that has not been the case,” Skylynn said as her eyes raked over Cadence.

“Do you plan on insulting all of my friends tonight?” I asked in a sharp tone.

“Definitely not talking about them,” Skylynn said, nodding in the direction of Mason and Gavin. With a sigh, her blue eyes locked with mine. I could have sworn I saw an apology there. For what, I don’t know.

“Who has you bothered?” I pushed.

“A few. But there is someone that is not thrilled that I’ve kept our friendship a secret.”

“Who?”

I glanced around the bar, noticing Wilder displaying the same disdainful glare as Cadence. Gavin had already decided she was nothing to worry about. He had pulled his laptop to him and was typing at the speed of light.

Skylynn returned their glare before she caught my stare. “You’ll see in...” she held up her hand and then slowly let her fingers count down to zero, then knocked her fist on the bar. At that moment, the chime on the door went off.

Time stopped.

I could not comprehend the warm, dominant energy that flowed through me as my eyes met this flawless being.

In the North Wing, he was never completely corporeal. None of the memories I had been able to unlock were. But now, right now, he was in the flesh. Sebastian Falcon was either standing feet from me or he had been reincarnated looking hotter than he was the first go around on the wheel of life.

His black, long sleeve T-shirt hinted to the perfection that it surely must be hiding. My eyes wanted to travel further down him, but they were pulled back to his intoxicating stare. His eyes were still a deep gray, but in the centers I could see unfathomable orange freckles, which mocked flames. He tilted his head slightly, allowing his somewhat long, dark auburn hair to fall over his high cheekbones. There was agony in his stare. It pulled me in. This. Could. Not. Be. Real.

I could swear his body relaxed all at once as his lips, perfectly shaped lips, echoed a wounded smile.

Our uncalled for stare may have relaxed him, but it had the opposite effect on me. Two beats—no, maybe three or four in one second followed by a thousand more. I had been staring at his image for years, and for some reason he was finally seeing me, too.

Almost immediately, he glanced down at the guards.

He turned to them and said something I could not hear, and as they passed what looked like short words shot back and forth. Skylynn gripped my arm. “If that doesn’t make you feel two beats, there is no hope for you,” she whispered.

I swallowed nervously as my eyes moved back to him. A flaming burn spread through my soul. I almost wanted to cry in relief, but that was foolish. In this life, right now, we were strangers. It didn’t matter that I felt like I had lived side by side with him for the past five years.

The guards had stood from their seat and left without another word. They didn’t go far, just to their SUV.

The boy walked slowly, yet confidently across the bar, catching my stare once more. This entire room should be frozen, at least twenty inches of ice by now—that was how out of control my emotions were—but no ice came. I felt my ivory skin turn crimson. It took every ounce of strength I had to stand still, not to rush to him, to welcome him home.

He sat down next to Skylynn and broke our gaze only to throw a glare to the corner the writer was working in. As if commanded to, the writer gathered his things and left without another word.

Skylynn let out a sigh as she slouched on her stool and pulled her coffee to her lips.

“Phoenix, please let me introduce you. This is Miss Genevieve Indiana Falcon,” she said with a nod to me.

Phoenix reached across the bar for my hand. As if under a spell, I gave it to him, but he didn’t shake it. Instead, he brought it to his warm lips. With his touch, I felt a slow burn ease through my body, causing my toes to curl and a gasp to escape my gently parted lips.

I had imagined this very scenario a million times over, feeling his skin, seeing his eyes meet mine, the touch of his lips against my skin. No doubt I had a very weak imagination. I had never felt anything so amazing in my life.

“Genevieve…it’s a pleasure,” Phoenix said in a deep voice that was pure silk. He said it the exact same way, the same way I heard him say it in that wing. How is that possible? How could he so clearly mock an ancestor of mine? How did Skylynn know him? How was any of this real?

“Sebastian,” I whispered before I could stop myself.

A wretched smile echoed in his hypnotic gaze. “Phoenix,” he said quietly, as if the lie was killing him. Did he realize that before this day that was the only name I knew him by? Maybe he was telling me that I was way off track, that he was not the boy in the North Wing.

“Sor—sorry,” I stuttered.

I knew the others had moved closer, that Wilder was behind me, defensive as always. Gavin had edged down the bar, curious and cautious as ever, and Mason had come back to this side of the bar, daring and protective as per his usual. But I didn’t see them. I could only see Phoenix, and oddly, in his energy I felt everything I loved about my guys. Phoenix wasn’t part of what I was looking for…he was two beats. He was the past I ached for. He barely said two words to me, and he was already the best thing that had happened to me in this life.

I held his gaze as my mind became flooded with the not-so-innocent memories I had seen in the North Wing, the ones where he passionately loved Genevieve, the ones that stole my breath, the ones I shied away from when they began. I shied away because the longing was too painful.

Phoenix glanced at Skylynn with what looked like contempt, then back to me. “My dear friend Skylynn mentioned that the two of you have been mates for a while.”

I didn’t answer him for a second. I was too caught up in my thoughts, running through my old memories. I could not figure out how any of this was real, and since I had never told anyone—not even Skylynn—about the memories I saw in the North Wing, I was alone in this questioning moment.

“Been through a lot,” I managed to say.

Phoenix pursed his lips as he looked down at the bar. A second later, his eyes moved across the wood to where my hand was still limply lying.

I heard the bar phone start to ring, but we all seemed to ignore it. We also ignored the new customers that seemed to fill the bar instantly, the loud music that came out of nowhere.

Phoenix let his long fingertips outline the snow-white skin that the scarf had covered for almost seven years. “Missing something?” he asked in a whisper that was almost drowned out by the sudden life the bar seemed to have.

I couldn’t think. Vibrating warmth was tingling the skin under his touch. I’d seen him do this in the North Wing, but that was just a visual. The memory carried no weight because I put distance between it and me, but right now—I remembered this. I remembered his touch as clearly as my name.

“Unfortunately.” I meant for that to sound sarcastic, but instead my tone brought pain to that one word.

Phoenix let his gaze rise to meet mine. “I can’t give it back…but I can give you this for now.”

Nervously, my eyes fell to my wrist. Now there was a pearl bracelet that looked utterly priceless and absolutely familiar.

I gasped as a beaming smile erased my perplexed expression. “I suppose I lost that again.” I don’t know why I said that aloud, why I was claiming that life I witnessed in the North Wing. I just knew it felt right. Everything about Phoenix felt right.

“Again?” he said, as if he did not believe I said that.

The last time I saw this bracelet was this morning, when the memories of the last night Sebastian and Genevieve spent together came to life in the North Wing.

Desire, a warm, sinful, desire swarmed through my veins as my gaze rose to meet his again, as I dared to confirm that yes, I said ‘again.’ Yes, I know you are Sebastian Falcon. Yes, I know that I was—am—your Genevieve. A war took you from me, and yes, I never forgot you. Yes, I know exactly who you are. Who I am. And no, I do not understand any of this.

Before any of that came out, Gavin’s uncle opened the bar door. “Indie, good God. I’ve been trying to call every phone you have. Doc said to call you. Your grandmother has taken a turn for the worse.”

What was odd was that he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking to the left of where I was standing.

I focused my eyes, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Gran was fine hours ago, really fine. But then I noticed that Skylynn and Phoenix had vanished and that the bar was full of people. Apparently it was an insane night here.

Grief slammed into me. Did I really just fabricate all of that? Was he not real? I didn’t have time to dwell on those thoughts. I was harshly pulled back into the life that was mine, a life that looked like it was only getting worse.

Wilder was in a corner booth with that girl, and Mason was at his drums, Sophia a few feet from him. Cadence and Gavin were at the other end of the bar, playing on a laptop.

I was now stuck in a dark world—one that I didn’t want to be in.

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

I climbed the bar, pushed through the people that were there, then jumped down and weaved through the crowd, glancing back to see Gavin and Cadence hurrying to follow me and Mason stopping the beat of his drums and rushing to where I was.

Wilder stood from the booth where he sat. The seductive blonde nonchalantly tried to stop him, but he ignored her.

“I’m driving,” he stated flatly, opening the door for me.

“Go back to your girl,” I demanded, trying to steal his keys, but he refused to give them to me. Instead, he opened the door and pushed me out into the parking lot.

I stood in shock. There were only a few cars here a second ago, and now it was packed and the day had turned to night. Wilder pulled me forward, thinking shock and grief were paralyzing me.

When he touched me, though, I saw that girl, and an entirely different scene played from what I’d witnessed before. Instead of her coming in and leaving moments later, he brought her in. He didn’t say a word to us. Instead, he huddled in the corner with her. A time or two, he tried to glance at me or walk over to us, but she’d pulled him into a deep kiss, distracting him from us, from me. That new memory caused rage and jealousy to erupt in my soul.

Before I could reason why I had those new memories or why one second I was given the one thing I always wanted—Sebastian in the flesh—and the next I was here, Wilder had me in his car and we were weaving through traffic, trying to get to the manor.

“D, it’s going to be okay,” he promised, reaching for my leg. I dodged away from him.

“I deserve that.”

“I don’t have the energy to figure you out. I think I’m going mad.”

“What about me do you have to figure out? You told me to move on. I did.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t tell you to act like I didn’t exist. You guys look serious. Have fun with that. She looks nice and warm.” I pulled my fist to my lips. Why did I say that? Why did it feel like I said it before? What the hell was going on?

“You all right, D? You’re acting like you just saw a ghost.”

I drew a sharp breath, knowing that there could be some truth to that.

“Weird day.”

“Too many old flames in one room?” he said with a smirk as he changed lanes at Mach speed.

There was far too much irony in his tone. I glanced back, trying to find a reason to believe that I wasn’t rushing to my grandmother’s deathbed. She was fine, and I had finally laid eyes on my two beats.

“D –”

I held up my hand to halt him. “Who’s behind us?” I asked, noticing the blinding lights in the side mirror, wondering if that was my guards but it couldn’t have been because in the reality I was in now, there were no guards.

“Gavin and the others.”

My stomach clenched with dread. “Call him. Tell him not to follow us. It’s dangerous!”

“Like they would listen.”

“You don’t understand!” I bellowed, trying to find his phone on him, feeling in his jacket, his pants.

“D! Stop it! We’re going to wreck!”

Before I could tell him truer words had never been spoken, his car slid off the road and downhill; he couldn’t stop it if he wanted to. A few feet later, he found a gravel road and managed to stay on it but he did not lose his speed. I didn’t even have to glance back to know that Gavin had followed our path.

“STOP! STOP! TRAIN!” I screamed, bracing my arms on the dash.

“There is no train!” he yelled, trying to keep control of the car. I was sure I was impairing him, my emotions were making everything freeze, the road more dangerous.

At that second, I heard the whistle. I felt adrenaline explode in my body. There was nowhere to go. He had turned to avoid the train that was quarter mile or so in the distance, and there was no way he was going to stop before then.

When he turned and plowed through the brush, I saw the lake. It wasn’t frozen until my eyes landed on it and that was when ice captured the waves and the wheels of Wilder’s car slid across it.

I was a fool, though. My relief that I’d frozen the water caused the ice to vanish, and the car that we were in was basically a frozen block of ice and began to sink immediately.

I struggled to get loose from my belt as the freezing water rose over me. Wilder was already kicking out the windshield, but he used too much energy too fast, and when the water went over our heads he passed out within seconds. I knew how to get out. I kicked out the back window and pulled him with me, cutting his arm again, waking him with a scream once again.

We swam past Gavin’s truck that had, of course, fallen on our car. After a gasp of air, I went back, ignoring Wilder’s protest.

He reached the truck before me again, but I knew where to go: to the back window.

Mason’s lips were on Sophia’s. He was trying to give her air, calm her down, a survival skill he’d learned countless summers ago. I got her belt loose, and he pushed her out but now he was out of wind.

The others were thrashing around in the front seat. I couldn’t figure out why they would not just go, what were they fighting about.

Finally, Wilder pulled Cadence and Gavin out. I looped my scarf around Mason and pulled him from the truck just after it tumbled deeper into the water.

My insane fear was causing the ice to form around us, making getting to the top near impossible. When I did finally get air, I couldn’t make the ice stay long enough to hold up Mason, who was delirious.

This was my dream, moment by agonizing moment, but when I finally reached the shore with Mason and looked back I couldn’t figure out why in the dream I would have gone back for a camera I didn’t have. That’s when I reached in my pocket to find the skeleton key gone.

I knew the current would whisk it away if I didn’t go back for it, but just as I dove back into the water a blinding light stopped me.

Breathless, I found myself perched on the beams across the top of my room, the same turned over bookcases and lamps only this time it wasn’t Cadence staring up at me. It was Skylynn.

My insane, rapid heartbeat almost made me lose my balance. I felt the ice under my hands, and on instinct I reached for my scarf, but it wasn’t there. Instead, there was the pearl bracelet. My heart ached at the sight of it. What the hell was going on!

Skylynn moved forward a few steps, holding my stare. “You want to come down from there?” she said in an exhausted tone.

“You’re a psychotic break,” I said with a gasp. “I’ve finally lost it. Maybe I never had it,” I said, trying to take in deep breaths. Though I was pulling air in, I still couldn’t breathe.

“You’ve definitely lost something, but it’s not your sanity.”

Terrified that I was going to fall, I turned my body, letting my arms support me, then swung my legs to the bookcase and climbed down. Slowly, I turned to face her.

“What did I lose, then?” I said after I swallowed nervously and saw all the bruises on my arms surface again.

Her angelic blue eyes filled with sympathy. “Your life.”

“Wh—what?”

She was in front of me in that instant and had pulled me to her, rocking me from side to side. Flashes of everything pushed through my mind.

I could smell the lake all over me. I felt the cold, the desperation, the fight for air. The fight for life.

“I’m not dead,” I stated flatly, having no choice but to believe that.

She urged me over my bed and sat me down. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a small velvet bag.

“Breathe this in,” she said, holding it near my mouth. I could smell lemon, and oddly it was bringing me a soothing calm. I took the sack from her and breathed in deeply, feeling her hand rub across my back.

“This can’t be real,” I said. After a few minutes, I let the sack fall and stared at the pearl bracelet now on my wrist. “What happened to me…?”

“I told you.”

“I’m breathing right now. I’m not dead.”

“It’s an illusion. Truth be told, where your body is, a machine is breathing for you. Right now, you’re standing at the edge of the veil. Your soul is plotting its course.”

“I’m not dead. This is a dream. I remember this dream. Cadence, Rasure, Mason holding me, talking to Gran…” I glanced down at my bracelet, feeling those two beats once more. “I remember everything.”

She reached for my hand and gripped it. “This accident happened almost two days ago. From what I gather, you were told your grandmother was dying. As you rushed to her, you had an accident…a car ran you off the road. Now you and your friends are all clinging to life. Without the machines, you would already be gone. Your brother Ben is keeping you alive, but Rasure is pushing to pull the plug. The doctors are on her side. They’re saying that all of you are clinically dead.”

“I talked to Rasure. I talked to people today,” I argued.

A protective anger masked her angelic image. “Everyone you talked to today…was not alive.”

“Gran,” I gasped.

Skylynn gripped my hand. “Her soul lingered only to tell you her peace. She’s moved on now—she is in bliss. I saw it with my own eyes.”

My eyes moved back and forth rapidly. Replaying my day, remembering that besides my friends and Gran I’d only talked to Rasure and Mrs. Cambridge.

“Rasure,” I seethed.

Skylynn let out a jagged breath. “I never wanted you to know this, any of this, not this way. You weren’t supposed to die.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I said, standing. “What are you? Did you kill me? I’m insane, just tell me that.”

A force of energy wrapped around me, and in the next beat I was sitting on the bed again. Whatever had moved me here was holding me in place.

“I,” Skylynn said, as if she didn’t notice that I was struggling against this invisible hold, “am a shadowed soul.”

“What the hell is a shadowed soul? Are you evil? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“No,” she said with a tone laced in grief. “I died before my time, and I can’t come back until everything has moved back into place. There is more to it, but that is the bottom line.”

“Is that what I am now?”

“No,” she whispered. She reached to caress my short blonde hair. “Your fate is undetermined at this moment.”

“What determines it?” Fear was all I could feel, not just for me, but for all of my friends.

“You. Whether or not you believe me, forgive me, trust me.”

“I’ve always trusted and believed you. What would I need to forgive you for?” I asked, letting my frantic stare meet hers.

“Listen, I’m in this form because my demon is impatience. I used magic—both good and bad magic—to manipulate people and circumstance, and when I died I didn’t learn my lesson. I fought against fate…the same impatience that had always cursed me.”

“You’ve manipulated me? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, you are the only good thing I’ve done in the recent past.”

“You’re not making any sense to me.”

Skylynn faced forward and leaned across her knees. She stared into the distance before she spoke. “The night I found you…I was hunting an Escort.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re beings that take the essence of life from others.”

“Like vampires or something?” I asked, not assuming anything was too unbelievable at this point.

“The essence of life is not blood. It’s energy,” she said sharply as her eyes met mine. It was like she was sick of explaining the difference, not to me, but to others. “They take energy from souls, which in turn dims the light of those souls. I heard a rumor in the veil that one of the prestigious Escorts was in play again. I knew if I took her down that it would set off a chain reaction. She was the mother to thousands just like her.”

“You’re not talking about Rasure,” I said with a gasp, remembering those pictures I’d developed before. That is, if I ever developed them. According to Skylynn, I was dead then.

Her eyes told me that was exactly who she was talking about. “The thing is, when I found her nest, I found you in the middle of it. At first I thought that she was not the great mother I was looking for, not if you’d managed to survive her, but then I realized who you are…one of seven.”

My eyes grew wide as I’d heard Gran say the same thing in my memories. “Seven what?”

“One of seven souls that will lead the war between light and darkness, one of the seven that will bring balance and save us from self-destruction.”

“I’m nothing more than a really janked up girl. I’m not your answer.”

The look in her eyes told me that she wanted to tell me I was right, but she could not force herself to lie. “I may have been wrong about your friends, but I’m not wrong about you.” She glanced at my wrist. “If I didn’t know that when I gave you that scarf, I knew for sure tonight.”

I felt something deep in my stomach coil with anticipation as I thought of the first time I saw Sebastian in the flesh. He looked back at me with the same ache that I knew my eyes must have carried, but he made no effort to confirm his name or his connection to me, at least not beyond this pearl bracelet. And according to Skylynn, I was dead when I laid eyes on him. What does that mean? Had he really had been haunting this manor all these years?

“What about my friends?” I asked, settling into this insanity.

“There have been many minds that have seen forward, predicted this time in our existence. I thought Mason and his brother were someone else. I learned the hard way that it was another set of twins that was meant to be at this fight, which was almost a relief because they are both still alive. I thought Gavin was another soul, too, but I have my doubts.”

“And what did you think I was?”

“The seventh sister, the one that was hidden by the veil.”

“I have far more than seven sisters.”

I almost told her that Gran had said something close to that earlier today, but I didn’t trust my recent memories as much as I should have.

“I’m not talking about bloodlines, or even bonds that make family. You are one of seven whose soul is old enough to remember its path, who will change the course of humanity.”

“I’m a Falcon,” I stated firmly, looking down at my bracelet.

Her glance followed mine. “I withheld a truth from you.”

“A truth that doesn’t make sense, so it doesn’t matter.” She needed to know I was grateful for everything she’d done for me. I was able to have some kind of life simply because I felt protected by her. She’d even made me feel invincible at times. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I had been at Sebastian’s side every day for years. That he was all too real to me. That I was terrified and excited that I had crossed his path once again.

“I’m talking about Phoenix.”

“Sebastian,” I corrected her, which confused her. “He must be dead, too, then, huh? What did he do to deserve the curse you’re fighting?”

“We are not the same. Not even close.”

My fearful eyes met hers. I remembered him walking into the shop, how everyone with the exception of my friends fled—even the men that were paid to protect me.

“He’s like Rasure?” I said with a gasp. That could not be true.

She raised a velvet bag to my mouth, forcing me to breathe in and out, forcing me to calm down.

“No. Phoenix is a phoenix. An immortal that can walk on all planes, that is, as long as he has every ounce of his ashes.”

The only reason I even knew what phoenixes were was that it was the seal of the city I lived in. It was a bird or something that destroyed itself by fire, only to be reborn new. Our city had burned before, rebuilt itself.

“That’s one good looking bird,” I said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Not a bird,” Skylynn assured me. “A soul that is immortal, that can always recreate itself, very powerful allies. One that I have crossed in the worst way possible.”

“You crossed him?” I asked with a shudder, knowing that it had to have taken more than nerve to do that.

Her gaze cascaded over me, and I saw the regret she claimed to feel. “I have a hard time asking for help. I always have. I only know how to bargain, how to manipulate. I stole some of his ashes. I did that so I could call him when I needed him.”

I was seeing her through new eyes. Before this moment, I never would have thought her to be all the things she was calling herself. She wasn’t cruel or cold, she was nurturing and giving—protective.

“So you had a thing for him?” I asked as jealousy ripped through my soul.

She smirked. “Oil and water. Never a thing.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m dead or whatever, but I’m not following you. I don’t get what you’re saying.” What I wanted to say was, ‘I don’t understand how you showed up with the boy I fell in love with long ago. How I’m connected to him, even though I’m not a blood Falcon.’ I wanted to ask her if she knew anything about twin realities or something called The Fall. I wanted to hash out everything I heard in the North Wing this morning, but I held back. I held back because I felt vulnerable right then, like I was standing between a past and a present and I wasn’t sure where my future was headed.

“When I first saw you, heard you tell me about the ice, your birth, I wasn’t entirely sure of who you were, not until I placed his ashes on your wrist and you breathed so deeply that you would have thought it was your first breath. I knew then you were his.”

I closed my eyes, soaking in all the memories I had of him, realizing I had been waiting for someone to say that to me for far too long.

“You have a past with him, but darkness divided you. Instead of telling him I found you, I kept you hidden.”

“Darkness did not take him. He left to fight. He left to protect lost souls. And when he left, he was not a phoenix.”

When she didn’t say anything, I let my gaze find her. I shrugged. “He’s surfaced in memories before, memories I found in this manor,” I admitted, leaving out the bit that I was pretty much obsessed with the parts of this manor I found those memories in.

“You never said...” Her voice trailed. She felt bad. I could see it in her eyes.

“I thought he was an ancestor,” I offered.

“You’re not saying something.”

A film of tears came over my eyes. I couldn’t deal with this. I was just told my grandmother was dead, that all my friends were, that I was and to top it off, I had the biggest heartbreaker in history decide to show himself now, a second too late.

“I didn’t say anything before because I saw him with my image. There is no way for me to have a history here. I was adopted. Half the time, I thought I fabricated him, and the other, I didn’t give a damn. It gave me peace to witness those memories.”

“Indie, I swear if you had mentioned this to me before, I would have taken you to him instantly.” She was fighting back tears, too. “Maybe if I had, this would not have happened.”

“If you knew—if you knew we had a past, why did you keep him away?”

“I don’t sense time the way you do. A year to you feels like five minutes to me. I was going to wait for your birthday. Only a few more weeks. He will never forgive me for this.”

“Call me crazy, but if any of the inside out memories in my mind are right, my address hasn’t changed. He never came home. It wasn’t your job to walk him to the front door.” Could he really have been alive all this time? Lived that many lives as a phoenix? He looked exactly the same way he did in the North Wing, like not a moment had passed. The only difference was the fire I saw in his eyes and the elevated power in his essence.

She started to say something, but she caught herself. She let out a breath, then said, “He was fighting the war, all the while looking for your soul, a soul that should be bright as the sun but was dimmed by grief, self-loathing…and now…if he has his way, you will never be with him.”

Could dead people puke? Because I was pretty sure I was about to. I pushed that sensation down as I squinted my eyes. I didn’t want anyone to see me this lovesick, not even Skylynn.

“Let me guess: death is not my color or something,” I said, hoping sarcasm would mask the quake in my voice.

“He wants to let you die. He thinks that is the only way to keep you safe, out of his war. Indie, I could tell him a million times, the people who are fighting with us now could tell him, but he won’t listen—he doesn’t understand that without you the war will end in self-destruction. In his mind, you will die and he will find you again, in another form, another life.”

“I’m too pissed off to die,” I fumed, thinking of Rasure, how she’d tormented me my entire life, and how she was now set to win my family name, my inheritance. And if that wasn’t enough, she had taken my only chance of happiness away. Two weeks. If I were alive in two weeks, the manor would have been mine and Skylynn would have brought me Sebastian. Life would have been perfect.

“You need to tell him that.”

“He left, Skylynn. He left with his brother, and he never came back.” I sucked in a breath. “Eventually, Ben will lose his court battle and they will pull the plug on my body, but I’m not going anywhere. I will haunt that bitch to the end of time.”

“A vengeful spirit. Now, that is not a good color for you—and sadly something that is very possible.” She hesitated as she thought over something, then went on. “I don’t think Rasure has any idea who you really are. If she did, you would not have survived this long. Escorts feed on energy. She fed off your endless grief, the grief of your enormous family over the years. She will feed off your loss, the grief this town has, and never realize that she lived under the same roof of the one soul that could end her. You’re going to have to let go and die the way Phoenix wishes, or you are going to have to convince him to save you so you can finish your work here and move on to the real war.”

“Where are my friends?” I asked with an ache in my voice. I had to know if they’d already moved on, if I was now truly alone.

Skylynn looked down. “Phoenix and I stepped into your loop, because we did, you came out of it faster. In their minds, they are still struggling for life, clinging to that river bank.”

“What!”

“When you die without warning, you relive your last moments, sometimes day, a few times over. It’s your soul’s way of saying goodbye or understanding that life in that form cannot exist anymore. Only a few fight their way back. They will tumble through those last hours a time or two more…then it will be over.”

“Nothing is over!” I bellowed, breaking free from the hold of the energy that had been keeping me in place.

I charged out of the room, down the hall, then to the stairs. There, I found grief. The first floor of my manor was filled with all of my brothers and sisters, their spouses, children, and family friends. They were mourning my grandmother and preparing to mourn for me.

I charged through the front door and ran toward the side yard, through the snowy woods that I knew the lake I’d perished in was behind.

I gasped for air as I scraped by trees, brush, and every obstacle that could stop me from reaching the lake that had taken my life.

Finally, I reached it, and when I did I heard coughing. I saw our bodies lying on the bank, fighting the cold, fighting for air.

There were others standing over our bodies, the bodyguards that had followed me to the shop earlier and the girl in red that was with Wilder.

The men were standing over Gavin and Sophia, and what looked like fog was rising from their bodies and moving into the men. That act seemed to bring them absolute bliss. The girl was over Mason, pulling the same fog from him, smiling seductively as she did.

They were sucking the life out of us, and without a doubt Wilder, Cadence, and I were next on their list. Without fear, I charged toward the girl. My rage-filled touch froze her instantly, and she locked eyes with me as the ice consumed her. It was like I was the last person she expected to see bring on her demise. I kicked her, breaking the ice, breaking her image into a thousand pieces.

I charged for the men next. I froze the one over Sophia, but just as I went to kick him I felt the other one pin my arms behind my back and for the first time in my life I felt cold, really cold. But that didn’t last long. A burn came instantly. I turned, grateful for the warmth and just in time to see the man fall to ash.

To see Phoenix standing there, staring at me with gray eyes, which had fire in their centers.

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

 

My heart was thundering in my chest. Every emotion known within my soul was surging through me. It was enough emotion to freeze the planet, end life on this rock, but no ice came. It didn’t come because my soul was on fire. Those memories, millions of them, were flooding my mind. I relived every moment I had spent in the North Wing over the last five years in a split second. Every part of me ached to pull him to me in a warm embrace, to welcome him back into my arms in some way. I felt like the hell of my life had vanished at the sight of him. He was a game-changer. I didn’t even know him in this life but already knew I would never forget him—I would never get over him.

The images of my friends vanished instantly, and silence came to the snowy night.

“What did you do with them?” My voice quivered as I struggled to quiet my mind.

Phoenix slanted his head ever so slightly, letting his blazing gaze ease down my body. Everywhere his eyes wandered, I felt a burn—the act of breathing was more than I could manage. That look, that one right there, was one of the thousands I’d craved to see aimed in my direction. My stare grew wider, and I was unable to hide how familiar he seemed to me. I told myself I was a fool when my reaction was not met equally. He was keeping his emotions at a distance, so much so that I doubted Skylynn’s words, at least the ones that said this boy somehow thought I was his.

“Resting.”

“They’re not resting,” I said as I pulled myself back into focus. “What were those people doing to them?”

“Feeding.”

A sick feeling climbed in my throat. I charged past him, but he appeared in front of me in that instant. “Where are you going, Love?” he said with an ache in his velvety smooth voice.

“To kill Rasure. Freeze her to death.”

“That’s my place,” he said with a lethal edge to his tone. I felt my soul seize. He was making my head spin. One second he acted as if I were some chore he had to complete, and the next he acted as if it were his place to seek vengeance on any harm Rasure had brought me.

I felt both relief and anger at the same time. Part of me was grateful he was now here—I felt a weight lift. The other part of me was furious that he hadn’t been here until now. Anger won that battle just as I said, “This is not your war. That woman has tormented me for too long.”

“Longer than you know.” His eyes fell into mine, and it took everything I had not to think of all those visions that were still fluttering in my mind. “I need you to let go. Die in peace. I will avenge your death. End her.” Emotion. He finally conveyed it in its raw form, without distance. I recognized that look in his eyes. It was the same one I saw when I looked in the mirror each morning. It was full of grief, pain, and determination to stay strong, move forward, closed off from the real world. He moved closer, and against my neck he breathed, “Please.” His body trembled slightly, as if that one word had sealed his fate.

I swallowed nervously as I casually leaned my head to the side, meeting his forehead to my temple. I closed my eyes, trying to suppress the burning sensation that was waving through my soul.

“I don’t know how to live or die in peace.”

I felt him tense next to me. The air around us became lighter. I knew this sensation. It was the way I always felt when I walked the halls of the North Wing or beckoned a memory of my family forward. It was the moment where grief faded and hope began to blossom deep inside.

I pulled my shoulders back as I moved away from him. “I’m going to kill her, then I’m going to kill everyone like her.”

Instantly, he’d gently pinned my arms behind my back, pressed his firm body against mine, and let his gray eyes bore into me. “I wasn’t there to protect you before, and it has cost me more pain than I care to dwell on…let go, I’ll follow you soon enough. I promise you that.”

I gasped hearing it for myself. He did think I was his. He did remember me. He was giving truth to the memories that were flooding me.

Under his touch, I felt passion, life. I felt everything I’d thought I deserved to feel—everything I wanted to feel with my almost lovers but couldn’t because I was in love with a memory that I thought could never be relived.

“I’m not going anywhere until she is dealt with. I will not let her destroy my family name. I owe that to my parents—that is the reason fate did not let me leave this world with them. It’s my job to kill her. Let me go.”

His grip tightened. “I’m your family. We have a family.”

“Had.” I wanted to take that word back as soon as I said it because I knew that was not completely the truth, and I couldn’t bear the pain I saw reflecting back at me. I bit my lip in an effort to stop myself from apologizing, to confessing that the one thing I looked forward to every day was watching our life then and begging him to explain to me how come we have been apart, why he didn’t come back, what happened to me then.

He tilted his head ever so slightly, letting his eyes fall to my lips. “Love, have you learned to lie…after all this time?” He let my arms go and slowly reached one hand for my hip and the other for my face.

My insides caved in. This was not the first time I had witnessed him call my image out on clouded truth. I felt like I had stepped into my favorite movie or book, and I could not comprehend it. I couldn’t understand how real this dream had become. It was terrifying me. I was terrified to realize that I loved him. Not his memory, not the idea of him, or even the fantasy of him. I loved him.

Within the next beat, his lips were on mine. I held mine firmly closed at first, not wanting to fall any deeper down this dark rabbit hole.

But the warmth of his lips forced a gasp from me, giving him a way in. I was too far gone at that moment to refuse him any longer. As if his kiss were my source of air, I pulled him closer, let my hungry lips claim his. As his hands squeezed my waist then moved further south, my memories of him changed. Instead of watching this love affair at a safe distance, I was the memory. I remembered his touch. I craved it. I’d mourned it, now I was living it.

In the North Wing, we were not always kind to each other—some fairy tale lovers—we were a real couple with real arguments. The fact is, we were both stubborn and at times had to agree to disagree. A kiss like this was exactly how every argument ended.

Something wild inside of me broke loose and I found myself pulling him closer, letting my starving hands roam over every part of him that I could reach as his did the same. I felt a shield breaking away from my soul. I felt myself take in a breath of relief. I let myself feel vulnerable in his arms. I was letting him in.

I’d been touched before, but never like this. Each time his hand moved, my skin ached, wanting the humming fire of his touch to return to the abandoned spot.

Beats later, I came to my senses. I was dead. He was a phoenix, and I had people who were counting on me to save them. I didn’t have time to make out on some lakeshore. Reluctantly, I pulled away from his lips and leaned my forehead to his chin as I closed my eyes.

“I missed you,” he whispered into the night.

It was a reflex. I never would have meant to say my next words aloud. “Where have you been?”

He glanced away, as if the last thing he expected was for me to acknowledge his words.

“Lost.”

My bank of memories was cruel to me. Instead of the bliss, they showed me what I saw this morning, our last night, him leaving to try and stop a war and protect his brother at the same time. That horrible howling noise coming from the dome room, the purple fire encasing the manor. I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what happened to me after he left the last time.

I had to move away from him and stay focused on what I was doing. I couldn’t come to grips with what was going on between him and me because I was losing my mind, and I was losing my mind because supposedly I was dead. I had to fix this. I had to find a way to save us all, and the only way I could see to do that was to end Rasure’s reign.

The water from the lake lapped onto the bank, bringing my nightmares to mind. Both of those dreams never let me back into that water. The first go around, I thought I was going after a camera; the second time told me it was a key. I didn’t know what the key unlocked, but I knew I was no fool and that if my living, breathing soul wanted it, so did my dead one.

I turned to the water, but he was there blocking my way. I would be a liar if I said the power he wasn’t even trying to display was turning me on, distracting me from my anger. This was a new aspect to him, one that I liked. A lot.

“Let go.” He breathed in. “Follow your almost lovers to the grave. I’ll finish this.”

My eyes grew wide as my lips parted slightly, not believing the jealousy I saw in his eyes. Did he realize I was not in the same life he knew before? Or that they were not almost lovers, they were friends, they had become family? I knew his temperament well enough to know that he was trying to distract me. He was trying to evoke my defensive side, and in the end getting this key out of the lake would be the last thing on my mind. I had to stay focused. “Rasure is either going to die or be haunted by all of us.”

“You don’t understand death, Love. How dangerous these thoughts are.” There was concern in his hard stare. I doubt most would have seen it if he spoke to them in this manner, but I both saw and felt it, right to my very core.

He was going to give me whiplash with how rapidly his tone and stance were changing. I knew one thing, as long as I stayed angry, I stayed focused.

“You’re right. As far as I’m concerned, this is a wicked dream. I have a paper due tomorrow, a portfolio that I should be working on, and a lawsuit against Rasure that is nearly won. Dream or death, either way I will win this.”

He stepped forward and peered down at me. “Cadence does not share your rage. Lover number one—Gavin, is that his name? He has vengeance, but not for Rasure. For the man that took his sister’s life. Lover number two, now he let go of his brother’s death, thanks to you…but he’s not angry enough at Rasure to even understand what he is fighting. He, along with lover number three, no doubt will be eaten alive by her army.”

I was speechless, frozen with uncertainty.

“You’re vengeful. Rasure didn’t know what you were in life, but she knows by now, and she also knows exactly how to torment a vengeful spirit just like you. She’ll drive you to the point of insanity and force you to beg for freedom. A freedom she will never give you.”

“Lies,” I said in a timid whisper.

“I have never lied to you before, and I will not start now. Let go. Don’t drag your friends’ souls into this. They will follow you, you know they will, but they will not be able to hold on to you. They will be called to where their soul’s fight is.”

“There has to be another way.” My gaze begged him for a solution, but the only one he cared to give was for me to let go.

“There is,” I heard Skylynn say.

She’d appeared at our side.

“Don’t you dare show your face here. You’ve done enough,” Phoenix fumed, which ignited a protective instinct deep inside of me. No one talks to my friends that way.

“Your anger is going to end us all,” Skylynn replied in an almost apologetic tone.

“No, my anger is going to protect her,” he guaranteed.

“Everyone else will eventually perish without her, without the two of you. You know that.”

“I know nothing. You have weaved this web of spells so deep that no one can find their way out. I’m not going to pull her through this.”

“Fine. I will.”

“You have no say,” Phoenix seethed.

“I have a say!” I yelled, not having any clue what they were arguing about in the first place. “I don’t give a fat flying freak about what you two are arguing about. I have an Escort to kill.” I turned to go to the lake, but Skylynn held my arm as she kept her glare on Phoenix.

“We’ve got three choices here. You burn her, I find someone else to do just that, or we help her find her revenge.”

“No one will burn her against my wishes, and you know that,” Phoenix raged through a locked jaw.

Seeing that he was not giving in to her reasoning, she changed her approach, and the protective angel that had fed me every word to say to those psychiatrists and lawyers surfaced. “I wonder what your little Sunshine friend would say about this. If she would find a way to help her, send Guardian here to heal her or the others, if she would not ask her all-powerful witch to bring her back from death’s door. She is one of seven, and Sunshine, as you call her, would not let one of her sisters fall.”

Guardian! He was still with him. Those brothers were still side-by-side after all this time. That eased me for some reason. But wait—why did she think Guardian was a healer. Exactly what the hell had these boys been up to all this time?

“That is a theory. Nothing more.”

I cocked my eyebrow, knowing deep down that the seven sisters was no theory. It couldn’t have been because my grandmother, who had nothing to do with either of them, had spoken of it to me. I didn’t have a chance to reveal that or question who this Sunshine girl was.

“Genevieve is too far gone to be brought back by anyone,” Phoenix raged on, causing the reality of my situation to settle a little deeper into my mind.

“Right, so burn her. I’d hate to ask Guardian to come to her rescue.”

“You do not understand the dynamics of what you are proposing. And stay away from Guardian. They have enough to deal with right now without your conniving,” Phoenix threw back at her.

I could swear I saw shame in Skylynn’s eyes. “Guardian knows that without this girl you will perish eventually, which means she is now in his path. Your call, Phoenix. According to you, either way we’re doomed, so why die alone?” was Skylynn’s quick and all-too-smooth comeback.

He leaned into her. “You’re only dragging this out so I’ll become attached, so I’ll burn her myself.”

Attached? What am I, a puppy? I turned crimson with rage.

“Then save us some time and do it now.”

“No,” he said flatly.

“Give me one reason why,” she argued.

He looked away, refusing to answer her, like he had already said it once and didn’t care to repeat himself.

“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” Skylynn accused him. “You know if you save her that she will demand that you save them, for you to sire all of her past lovers. You would rather her die than have to look them in the eye forevermore.”

His glare met hers instantly. “There wouldn’t be past lovers if you’d told me you found her. This is your fault. Not mine.”

“She was a child, Phoenix! She never would have understood, seen you through the eyes of a woman. It would not have been the same as it was before, and you know it.”

“She hasn’t been a child for awhile. Do you honestly think I couldn’t smell her on those boys? Both Mason and Wilder reeked of her scent—you knew about that. You led them to her.” He leaned forward with a pained, lethal gaze. “What did I ever do to deserve that? What made you that cold, Skylynn? All you had to do was trust us. We would have helped you. There was never a reason for these games you play.” He let silence come to the night as he gazed at me. I didn’t see jealousy in his eyes, at least not to the degree that Skylynn was accusing him of. I saw grief. “You robbed us. I could have protected her. It’s not about any past lovers, it’s about the fact that you left her vulnerable. You’ve been killing her for years. ”

Skylynn rocked backward, as if his words had stabbed her where she stood. “I led them to her because I thought they were in our army. And I’ll admit that I was wrong about what role they were supposed to play, but I don’t regret it…she was too young.” Skylynn glanced away. “She’s real, Phoenix. Everything you have ever wanted is standing before you. Help me keep her where she belongs. With you.”

Phoenix’s eyes moved to mine, instantly losing the rage they had been spearing into Skylynn. I could see him questioning his resolve. His long fingertips beckoned me closer, but I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I saw a fog leave my body. As it glided to him, it turned into a sphere. He studied the gray ball of what I thought might be energy for what seemed like eternity, then he sent it back to my body.

His eyes locked with mine, and the second they did a wave of hot, seething energy swarmed through me like a tidal wave, causing my toes to curl and a gasp to escape my lips. I tried to hold my breath, to tell my chest not to rise and fall rapidly. I’d never been so revealing with anyone. What was he doing to me?

My reaction caused his eyes to widen with surprise. I could swear I saw forgiveness and hope in his eyes. I was so numb, so at peace, and I had no idea why. I had to figure out how to block this boy. I could not give him control over me. What test did he just give me…and did I pass it? Those were the questions I was screaming on the inside.

Beats later, I found my focus again. “Look, I have no idea what the two of you are arguing about or why I’m in the middle of this. All I know is I was dead when I woke up this morning, and I’ll bring death before the day is over.” I pushed past Phoenix, trying to reach the lake. I didn’t know why I needed or wanted that key, but I couldn’t focus on anything else. It was like I knew it was my answer—the first step in killing Rasure.

Phoenix’s strong hand slid around my arm as I passed him and pulled me to him. Against my neck he whispered, “We end this, and you let go. You die in peace.” Even if I wanted to argue with him, his warm breath was easing down my neck and made it impossible for me to form a clear, coherent argument. For a second, I even forgot what I was trying to end.

His thumb started to trace small circles against my skin, driving me to the point of distraction. “Why are you so intent on going for a night swim?”

“There is a key. I think.”

“You think,” he repeated.

“Don’t toy with her,” Skylynn warned. “You know she’s in a fog.”

“Exactly. That is why you should not be putting ideas into her head.”

“I’m not in a fog,” I said, raising my hands to stop their bickering.

“Is that a fact?” Phoenix said as he gazed down at me. “You see, Love, when you die…your mind panics, reaches back for memories as it tries to understand how it arrived at its end, but at first the memories are like a dream. Only places are clear; the words, the objects in those places change. Emotions come into play after some time, and those emotions shape the dream into a solid memory. You’re looking for a key, but for all you know it could be a book, a jewel, or nothing at all. Minutes ago, you were prepared to charge into the manor and freeze, then shatter Rasure—now you think you need a key. Tell me that’s not odd. Tell me you do not want to dive into this lake for nothing more than kicks and giggles. That you only want to kill that woman for the same reason.”

My stare moved to the snow on the bank. I did feel like I was in a dream. Nothing made sense. I flashed back over my recent memories. I remembered developing that film clear as day. I remembered that key. It had my family name on it, along with an ‘M.’

As I focused on that, I remembered the time at the shop entirely differently. I remembered spending the afternoon at Gavin and Mason’s side, going through old newspaper clippings we found online, ones that held images of Rasure. I remembered in each one that she had a clock somewhere near her. I remembered Mason making a joke about how it must be her soul, that or the soul of the poor bastard that had married her. That remark freaked out Cadence. She took the key and shoved it in her pocket. By then, the shop was filling up and we didn’t have the time to do any more research.

I remembered something else: that key floating in the cab of Gavin’s truck, falling out of Cadence’s hand, all of them struggling to grab it as they escaped, but the lack of air didn’t give them a chance.

“Odd or not, the fog is clearing. That key unlocks something, and it’s in the cab of Gavin’s truck. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to freeze Rasure to death, but I want that key now.”

His gray eyes cascaded over my determined expression. A nod from him caused the water to begin to part, and within three beats the lakebed was exposed and the water was draped aside, dancing in place, waiting for permission to fall again.

Wilder’s car was on the bottom, and Gavin’s truck was on its side just behind it. With more confidence than I should have had, I walked across the rocky lakebed to the truck, fumbling over the rocks as gracefully as I could.

I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find that stupid key. I focused on the memories of the time I was under water. I was sure that key didn’t make it out of this lake on anyone. It was still drifting downward when I left, when I had no choice but to fight for air.

The memory of that caused fog to leak from my lips. I heard the cracking of the water that was being held back. A halfhearted glance to the ice the lake was becoming revealed my key: it was frozen in place in the water.

I was screwed now. If Phoenix let this water go, it would flow to God knows where. I could try to catch it, but I had my doubts that I would be so lucky.

I felt a hot breeze and glanced to my side to find Phoenix. He reached his long fingertips to the ice, melting a small hole in it instantly. He had my key in the next beat, all the while holding my stare. “Your key, Love.”

With a trembling hand, I took it from him. He looped his arm around my waist, and in the next beat I was on the bank and the lake was falling into place.

“How do you do that? Move that fast?” I whispered, trying to understand what he was, what he had become since he left the manor.

He reached to trace the outline of my eye, sending a surge of warmth through me. “There is so much I could have shown you. Millions of places I wanted to take you…but that is lost to us now…”

“That’s a shame,” I breathed before finding my focus once again. I went to run, but he held my wrist, and when he did I felt a blazing burn. It was so painful, I screamed out in agony and fell to my knees gasping. I tried to pull away, but he was too strong. He pulled me up with little effort, and in the next beat his lips were on my wrist. The agony faded instantly, and I sighed as I imagined his lips moving up my arm, across my body.

Sanity came back to me as I pulled my wrist from him. There I saw a small bird, a falcon. It was only a centimeter or so wide and off to the side of my wrist, looking as if it were flying away. “What did you do to me?” I bellowed.

“I’m not losing you in this veil. Go fight your war. I’ll find you when it’s over. I’ll know when you’re in danger—or anything else.”

I’ve always considered myself a balanced person, someone who has control over her emotions and acts accordingly. Not at that instant. Rage ripped through me so fast that I didn’t have room for thoughts.

“You’re out of your freaking mind! You marked me! Like I’m some kind of property! You’ve got a wakeup call coming, buddy. I do not belong to anyone or anything! Take your freaking tracking device off me—NOW!”

My outburst didn’t faze him at all. In fact, I thought I saw a spark of recognition in his eyes as a sinful smile echoed on the corners of his lips.

I was in his arms the next second. His lips were near my ear, and I felt his breath slide down my neck. “That is not my mark. Trust me, Love.” His hands moved down my side to my lower waist, sending an unbelievable sensation through my body. “I want nothing more than to mark your soul…” his hands squeezed my hip bones, “but time is our enemy.” His lips brushed against my neck before he slowly moved away. “I just have to know you are safe. Grant me that one request.”

I didn’t say a word because the last thing I wanted to do was speak the truth, the truth that would beg him to stake that claim. He would surely think I was in some kind of ‘death fog’ then. What kind of person goes from rage to passion within a split second? Why was he driving me so crazy?

I just stared as I tried to get hold of what was left of my reality.

“You need to slow it down, Phoenix,” Skylynn warned. “She is intoxicated by death right now. And if I recall correctly, she was a rather violent drinker.”

His stare broke from mine, only to glare at Skylynn. “Are you admitting to me that you not only fed her lovers but let her run wild?” Phoenix said with scorn in his tone.

“Your imagination is too rich. She was never wild—or anything else. You’ve seen that for yourself now.”

I was not going to stand there and listen to them argue about me like I was not even there. I pushed past Phoenix and broke into a sprint. Rasure was my next target. I’d freeze her, all but her head, then demand that she tell me what this key went to.

A few steps into my sprint, everything around me changed.

I was running through my bedroom door. The lights were out, but I wasn’t alone in there. Cadence and Gavin were in her bed, and they weren’t sleeping. They were very, very distracted with each other.

The bookcase to my darkroom was ajar, and I saw Mason there, waving me in. In a stunned fog, I went to him.

One thing I now knew for sure: death was like a dream, an all-too-real dream.

Mason slammed the bookcase closed behind me, as if he wanted Gavin and Cadence to know we walked by them. I knew him well enough to know he was furious, but I couldn’t understand why.

“We gotta talk,” he said to me when I reached the bottom stair.

“I’ll get our revenge on Rasure,” I said quietly. I was relieved. I didn’t want to tell him that we were dead…

“We must not be talking about the same thing,” he muttered as his chocolate eyes met mine.

“Whatever you want to tell me, I promise you, my news is more important.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Trust me, Mason,” I said, reaching for him, but he dodged my touch.

“She came on to me, Indie.”

“What? Who, Sophia? That doesn’t matter right now. Nothing matters because—”

“Cadence. She came on to me, and it wasn’t the first time. I told her if she didn’t tell Gavin that I would. Obviously, she didn’t,” he said, pointing at the stairway.

“She was trying to cheat on Gavin—with you?” I asked, completely mystified. That didn’t sound like the Cadence I knew.

“You want me to really piss you off? She came on to Wilder last fall, while you were still hooked up. I don’t know what her deal is, but I’m sick of her messing with my boy’s head, playing all innocent, trying to get him to talk about his sister. He was over that. The second you helped him, he was over that, and what does she do? Dig around in his head and bring it up again, get him ticked off and sad when all the while she’s coming on to his best friends. Psychologist-wanna-be my ass. She’s a born actress, and right now Gavin is playing the part of the fool.”

I didn’t know what to say to him. I could tell he had been holding this in for a while and that he couldn’t stand it any longer.

He cursed under his breath. “I didn’t mean to throw that at you. But right now, as far as I’m concerned Cadence is a bigger threat than Rasure.”

He sat down on my couch and leaned forward, raking his fingers through his hair.

I took a breath and closed my eyes. If I were alive, I would defend Cadence, tell him she was empty, that she’d fought rejection and abandonment her entire life and this was her way of making sure she was wanted. Granted, it was a shallow way, and she needed to understand that random physical acts would not fill that emptiness inside her soul…but I was dead. So was she, and none of this mattered anymore.

I sat down next him and let my hand rest on his back. He shivered once as my emotions produced the cold I was known for. “Have you ever heard that question if this was your last day, what would matter? What would you do?”

“I knew you would defend her. You don’t understand. When she is not around you, she is a completely different person, not the Cadence you know. I think she envies you, that she has always been jealous. I’m not even sure it’s the money she’s jaded about.”

He really was mad and letting his emotions cloud his judgment. Cadence knew she would never have to worry about money. She knew that I would take care of her. I mean, yeah, she was upset that the moment she became a part of a family it vanished, but who wouldn’t be? “I’m not defending her. I’m telling you it doesn’t matter because…because our life is over.”

Sharply, he looked at me. “Indie, what the hell is going on with you?”

“With us, you mean. Mason, we’re dead. Living in a cycle of our last day until our minds figure out we’re gone.”

“Is Rasure messing with you? Did she drug you or something?”

“We were in a car crash. We ran off the road, then sank in the lake. My emotions turned it to ice. I had to fight to get you out, we all fought to save each other.”

As I spoke, his face turned white as a ghost. He knew exactly what I was talking about. I’d just turned a light on in his head.

“A car ran us off the road, you and Wilder, then us …”

“Right,” I said in a shaky voice.

He stood up immediately and began to pace back and forth, cracking his knuckles, the act he always goes through before he gets on stage or does something that takes a dose of adrenaline to get through.

“Why are we still here?” he asked after a beat or two.

“I don’t know. But I’m not walking into some peaceful light. I think our bodies are on life support or something. Rasure will pull the plug on me. I’m not sure how long your family will hold out.”

“Not long, not if they listen to me,” he said through a locked jaw. When his brother nearly drowned, hit his head on the rocks in the river years ago, his parents kept him alive for months. Mason finally convinced them to let him go and made them swear they would never do that to him.

He sat down next to me, looking exhausted all at once. “I’m not going peacefully either.” He reached his arm around me, and I let myself lean into him, knowing it could be the very last time.

“Listen, Rasure is some kind of evil. I’m going to end her. I’m mad enough to end her—to become some kind of vengeful spirit, but I don’t think you are. I think you need to let go.” Grief slammed into my soul. I’d never seen my life without Mason. He truly was one of my best friends, someone I knew I could trust.

He leaned back on the couch, having a hard time holding his eyes open. Tears dared to spill from my eyes.

“I’m mad enough,” he promised. “She killed us…I need to get that damn key,” he muttered.

“You remember the key?” I asked, glancing to the room. The film I thought I’d developed was nowhere in sight. The camera was still sitting where it always was. There was too much dust on it for me to think that it had been moved.

“Yeah, I was the one that found it. It fell out of those clocks you had us take to charity. We kept it, showed you at the bar, but by then you’d already told her who you gave them to. From the bar, we watched a truck come and load everything we dropped off across the street. That same truck ran us off the road a few hours later. She killed us over a freaking key.”

I felt my skin boil. “I have it,” I said, showing him the skeleton key I was clenching with my hand.

Sleepily, he glanced at it. “That kinda looks like it.”

“It is it. I pulled it from the lake.”

He didn’t argue. His eyes closed, and I shook him, but he didn’t move. “Mason...oh God, Mason!” I said through tears as my hands outlined his boyish face, the innocence that hid the daredevil in his soul. I screamed his name again but he refused to budge.

“He’s not gone,” I heard Skylynn say and turned to see her standing in front of me.

“Yes, he is!”

“No, he’s asleep, reliving his last day. He thinks he’s holding you right after you told him about your night terror.”

“Who sleeps in death? I told him we were dead! Why did he still fall asleep?”

“It took you a while to understand it, that is, if you even do. You are only as aware as you are because of Phoenix.”

I glanced down at the mark on my wrist, the falcon in flight. “Why did he chain me like some animal? What was that test thing he did on me?”

“He didn’t chain you, he just wanted to be able to find you again if he needs to. You’ve been lost to him for a while. I told you that your energy should be as bright as the sun, but it’s not. It’s almost as dark as his.”

“Is that what that fog test was about? He was trying to see my energy?”

She smirked. “I’m sure that was half the reason. Indie, you two have been apart for a long time, a very long time. And when he found you, your scent was saturated by Mason’s. He thought he lost you, that you had fallen in love with another, that you died with that person, and that it was his job to help you cross over. Beyond that, he was trying to see how much of your soul is still here, how much could have moved on.”

“What?”

“You are all here, Indie. Don’t worry about it. And anyone could see that you, at least your soul, has never forgotten him.”

I stood and faced her eye-to-eye. I held no emotion in my stare. “My soul? How about this life? How about the fact that he is a living fantasy that appeared in my real world? I don’t know what the hell he’s gotten himself wrapped up in, but I know that it’s changed him. I know he was happy, that he had dreams and now he doesn’t. We are not the same people, and I will be damned if I have to beg him or anyone else for my own life. Test or no test, right or wrong, he’s not going to control my future.”

A proud smile came to her expression. “Keep that resolve. We will fight this together.” She pulled her shoulders back. “Truth be told, you know him better than each of your friends…even me. That is going to help us convince him to let you live.”

“And why exactly does he get the final say?”

“His power can save you. I could find people with power close to his, but because he loves you his energy will grant that you rise from this veil.”

“Obviously, he doesn’t agree with you.”

“And I plan to figure out why. I thought it was jealousy, but he clearly showed both of us on the bank of the river that he was not fighting that emotion, but rather grief. He’s never been a quitter. I think he is just going through a lot of changes right now.”

“Changes that are more nerve-wracking than death?” I mocked, not caring to hear about some supernatural melodrama.

“In a way. People that were lost to him, you and his brother, have surfaced within days of each other—just in time to see how wickedly doomed we all are in this war of darkness.”

I swallowed nervously. The relief I had felt before, that at the very least Guardian and Sebastian had been side by side this entire time, vanished. No wonder he was not the same man anymore. Everyone that brought him laughter and happiness was taken away.

“Guardian. He hasn’t been with him.” My voice trembled.

Skylynn’s eyes grew wide for an instant, shocked that I was pulling memories and random bits of her and Phoenix’s argument together.

“They parted ways for a while, but they found their way back.”

I clenched my stomach as a sick feeling came to me. “Guardian left Phoenix to look for his girl, didn’t he?”

She nodded absently, pulling her brow together.

Maybe this was a part of death, remembering your entire existence. Though I never saw the memories that were racing through my mind in the North Wing, I knew they were real. My mind was starting to remember the very end, and I was trying to block it. I knew I would not be able to withstand it. Guardian’s girl was left in my care. Apparently, I failed my charge.

“I was the one that lost her. Is this war you two are fighting because of that?”

She stared at me for a seemingly endless moment. I had no idea what she was trying to figure out, but I was sick of her and Phoenix treating me like some wounded animal that was not of sound mind.

“This war is not your fault, and it’s not over a girl. It’s a battle of darkness and light that I cannot begin to explain to you right now. We have one sole focus: to save your life.”

“Life or no life, Rasure is going down. I have no issue with being vengeful or whatever else you and Phoenix keep warning me about. I will not convince or beg anyone to save my life. I will haunt that woman across time and space. I will exact vengeance for my family.”

“You’re right. You could haunt her. I doubt that a woman that has lived as long as she has, a woman that breeds evil, would really care that one spirit is knocking things over and tormenting her. You would be like a fly that refused to land long enough for it to be swat. Now, if you were a phoenix, you would breathe. Your family would see you, the world would see you, no one would know that you died and were reborn again. You could end her, destroy the empire she has built and so much more in that form.”

“Is that what the two of you were arguing about? You want him to turn me or something?”

“I want him to save you,” she corrected.

“So what is his problem with that?”

“My guess—that you would be at his side for all of eternity.”

I felt sick, really sick, like someone had sucked all the life out of me and set my body on fire.

“Well, you know what?” I said once I caught my breath. “I don’t want to be strapped to anyone either—not someone that doesn’t want me, that’s for sure.”

Her stare was rife with sympathy. “He’s eternally committed to you…”

I don’t know why, but her words gave me a sense of life once again. “You’re making no sense to me.”

“He is deep in this war. He knows he’s about to walk through hell. Not once, but a million times over. He doesn’t want you at his side when he does that. He wants to keep you safe, in death.”

I knew from the look in her eye that she was one hundred percent serious, but I had no idea what war they were in—I had my own to wage. I clenched the key in my fist, prepared to find every lock in this manor and turn it.

“I can call in a few favors, tell the circle we run with that Phoenix is doing something lethal. I know I’m pushing you away, but you’re a big girl now and you do not need me to be your voice. He will not be able to deny your request. That is, if it’s genuine.”

I glanced back at Mason’s sleeping body, then to her. “I’m not afraid to ask for help, but I’m most definitely not afraid to fight on my own. I unraveled something hours before my death. I’m not clear on what that was, but I plan to figure it out.”

I walked past her and up my stone stairs, but when I pushed the bookcase back I didn’t find my room.

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

 

There was a fire crackling in the massive fireplace on the center wall, reflecting its light on the endless bookshelves contained within the room. The lounging furniture was arranged comfortably around the fire, and the Oriental rugs were spread across the floor.

This was the library on the first floor of the manor, the one that was three stories high, a room I was rarely in. It had too many memories—not of my family, but of a past I’d yearned for on a daily basis for years. Most of the items in this room, with my touch, would extend the life I’d witnessed in the North Wing.

I was worried about this fog of death I had been accused of being in because the ancient memories now had both Mason and Gavin mingled within them, along with Gran, Phoenix, and other faces I wanted to remember more clearly but refused to give into. I had to stay focused, stay resolute in the task of destroying Rasure.

My brother Ben was sitting on the couch before the fire, leaning forward and swirling a short glass of whisky. He’d aged. He was in his early forties, but right now he looked closer to fifty.

I crept closer to him, wanting so badly to touch him, to tell him I was okay. As I approached, he didn’t move, but he did glance down at the coffee table in front of him. “Indie…you won…I wish I could tell you that…I wish you would tell me if I need to fight to hold on to you, or let you rest in peace.” His voice was carrying a quiver that I’d never heard before.

I looked down at the papers in front of him, and through all the legal mumbo jumbo I gathered that not only had I won my inheritance, but that I was set to receive it earlier than my birthday.

On his tablet, I could see that he was drawing up a draft to stop Rasure from pulling the plug on me. I knew that look in his eye. He was trying to figure out if that was something he was doing out of spite or because it was right.

I reached for his tablet. My emotions should have frozen it solid, but instead I felt warmth in my hands. I touched the email icon, wanting to type a message to him, but when I opened it I saw the email I sent him telling him that I had taken the clocks to Mrs. Cambridge’s charity, told Rasure, then watched her send people to retrieve them.

Reading my own words caused memories of my last living day to flood my mind.

I’d sent that email the moment I saw that truck load her things up. I guess the fog of my death had erased that memory, but Mason had brought it back a moment or two ago. In the email, I’d described the truck, the men, told him exactly when it happened.

I opened the email on his tablet and pushed it forward on the table. The force I used should have thrown it across the room, but it only made it fall to the floor. It took Ben a second to even notice it had fallen. Finally, he picked it up and read my words. I watched his skin turn red with rage. He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. “Dianne,” that was his assistant, “I want a copy of the police reports from Indie’s accident. I need a description of the vehicle that was seen running them off the road.” He stood, gathering his things. “And file the appeal immediately. Tell the judge that if he pulls that plug, he will have every Falcon child to answer to, not just one old woman.”

As he took his things and left the library, he listened to what she had to say and gave orders as to what needed to be done and how.

I smirked. Maybe I could haunt Rasure in her prison cell. If Ben figured out she had anything to do with my accident, even had the thought of bringing harm to me, he would not rest until she was six feet under the nearest jail.

I glanced around the library. Those clocks, three grandfather clocks, and one small one that sat on the mantle all came from this room. The grandfather clocks sat in the center of each wall, the small one on the mantle above the fireplace. None of them were working, and they were all sitting right back where they belonged.

I gripped the key in my hand and headed for the one on the east wall. I touched every part of it, looking for some hidden door, some place to put this key. I searched inside and out but found nothing. I wished Mason had told me which one the key had fallen out of. With a grunt, I moved to the one on the north wall, finding it the same, identical to the other.

After a fruitless search, I stood and prepared to cross the room to the small one on the mantel. Just as I passed the double doors that led out of this room, one of them opened. Rasure.

She was dressed all in black, which enhanced the blazing red hair that was only slightly highlighted with gray. I’m sure she was trying to mock-up her grief with her attire.

Unlike Ben, who could not see me, she looked right at me. “Genevieve, dear, what on Earth are you doing up at this hour?”

I found it odd that she didn’t cross the threshold, that she didn’t walk up to me with her familiar demeaning dominance.

“Dead people don’t sleep.”

She smiled slightly. “Have you had another night terror? Come, child. I’ll walk you to your room.”

“Go to hell. Why are the clocks back?”

“They never left. Why would they? They belong to this family.”

“You know they left. You know I gave them away to spite you. What’s wrong, Rasure? Are you missing something? Did something fall out of the clocks when they were moved?”

Her smile fell, and evil filled her dark eyes. “You’re confused, dear. You must have fallen off your wagon. The devil’s drink will cloud anyone’s judgment, especially someone as petite as you who often forgets to eat.”

“I’m going to freeze you—into a solid block of ice. Then I’m going to shatter you into a billion pieces, burn what’s left of you. Then I’m going to move on and destroy the kingdom you have built under my family name.”

“Awful bold words. Are you brave enough to say them standing before me?”

Right as I stepped forward, Phoenix appeared in front of me.

I’d never seen shock in Rasure’s expression, so I enjoyed watching her evil eyes expand, even if it was only for a second.

I wasn’t going to let him shield me, so I came to his side. He held out his arm. It wasn’t a request that I stay—it was a demand.

“I see,” Rasure said with a cool smile. “You have added another notch to your bed post. A fiery one at that.”

I could feel the rage and jealousy radiating off of Phoenix as he pulled his shoulders back and glared at Rasure.

“Well, now, this changes everything, doesn’t it, Genevieve?” Rasure said in her fake ‘I’m-too-rich-to-say-what-I-really-mean’ tone.

“It changes nothing. I still hate you with every ounce of my soul. I will still end you,” I seethed.

“I’m afraid the water that took your life also took the tools you would need to do such a thing…it’s a shame, though. I have grown gracious over the last century. Normally, I set a soul or two free each year. Shame.”

A glance from Phoenix slammed the door in her face and caused the old-fashioned lock that was a wooden plank to fall into place.

“What did she mean by that?” I asked, daring to look up at him. His stare was full of emotion, both grief and jealousy fighting to take control.

“She meant that if you kill her before setting the souls she has captured free that she will be able to come back through them. She means that no ice could kill her.”

“Souls? She really is a demon.”

“Escort.”

“Whatever.”

He smirked as his gray eyes melted over me. The gleam of the fireplace enhanced every flawless feature of his body. I felt my heart begin to beat violently in my chest and the air leave my lungs in a rush.

“What are you thinking right now?” he asked, letting his gaze fall into mine, allowing me to see the flame in the center of the gray.

“I’m trying to figure out how come dead people have heartbeats.”

That caused the allure in his eyes to intensify. “Your heart pounds around me?”

The real me started to surface, the one that was coolheaded, witty, straightforward, the part of me that said what I was thinking when I was thinking it. “You can smell other boys on me, but you cannot hear my heartbeat?”

His smirk turned into a beaming smile, and he glanced away as he tried to hide it. “Some scents you never forget.”

“What decade did I know you in?”

“Do you mean what century, what dimension, what reality…”

“Which one? For how long?” I asked, ignoring how insane his reply was.

Phoenix’s gaze fell to my lips, and I felt a swarm of burning energy wave though me, causing my insides to quiver with anticipation. “Time bends. As far as I’m concerned, you have been mine for an eternity.”

Mine. That one word echoed relief through me.

“This house is only two hundred years old,” I said, trying to reason with myself. Even though in the North Wing I had overheard such things as ‘alternate realities’ and ‘wars of light and dark,’ I always took it as semantics, not truth.

That made him smile, but it was a sad smile. “You remember me in this home?” he asked in a heated whisper.

How could he question that? Did he honestly think that if I didn’t remember him I would react the way I have toward him? I mean, without the memories I’m sure he would have still made my heart flutter, but were my eyes not reflecting the deep, aching emotions swarming in my soul?

I glanced at the Oriental rug before the fire and felt my heart beat out of control. That was one of the many places I had seen him love my image, one of the many memories I could not bear to watch, for they made me long for him.

“Clearly,” I said, letting my gaze rise to meet his.

“I built this home for you,” he said in a whisper. “But…I didn’t build it here, not in this reality. I have no idea how you moved it. What you have done in my absence.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have left, then,” was my honest reply. I admit it. I was bitter that he never returned. Whether it was in this life, this reality or not, he didn’t return. I’d had to take control of this home, and it had been a battle that ripped my soul into shreds each day.

“I left to defend you, our home, our beliefs. That is my only regret. I fight that demon with every breath I take.”

I moved my head from side to side in absolute astonishment.

“What?” he asked, noticing my condescending gaze.

“I don’t understand what you and Skylynn are bickering about, but it sounds to me like you are repeating your past. I’m not going to let you tuck me away again.”

“I’m not repeating anything,” he breathed, trying to hide his shock that I was using my memories to talk to him, that I was speaking to him as if it was this life I knew him in.

“At Guardian’s side, you left. Yes, you left to defend our family. I will give you that much. And yes, then I could not stand at your side because I had to care for our home, for the family we were building of lost souls. You left me well-guarded with a promise that you would return. I don’t know who to blame for this absence, but I know time has changed us both. This war of light and dark that I do not have the strength to understand right now is going to rip us apart again. I want to grieve for our past. I want to feel joy that I have found you. I want to understand who I was and who I have become, but I can’t do that right now. I have to grasp the reality I am in. I have to fight for the last twenty-one years I’ve lived. I’m not dying in peace. I’ll figure out what this key unlocks and set whatever souls she has trapped, including mine, free…and while I do that, you will be off fighting another war…one that is supposed to protect me.”

Pain caused the flames in his eyes to erupt. “Skylynn is feeding you these memories.”

He was so off-base, it wasn’t even funny.

“Do you want to know what clothes you were wearing as you walked away from me? Or do you want me to tell you how we stayed up all night, promising each other that we had no choice but to let you take Guardian to speak to our world, for you to find peace with letting him answer the call in his soul?” I let my words settle before I spoke again. “I have a million more memories fluttering around in my mind, ones that I have vividly witnessed. One touch from you brought me life in death. I’m struggling to hold on to Indie as my mind pulls back into the time I was your Genevieve.”

My words were killing him. He was frozen in place, transfixed.

“I don’t want you to be angry at Skylynn. No matter how she may have crossed you or Guardian, she saved my life. Every day, she saved me, and right now she is struggling to do that again.”

His jaw rippled. “I can’t forgive her for keeping me from you.”

“The only thing standing between me and you right now is our egos. Not Skylynn.”

One beat later, his lips were on mine, pulling me into a deep, passionate kiss. His burning kiss traveled across my jawline as my arms looped under his shoulders, pulling his chest closer to me. When his lips reached my ear, he breathed, “I need you to be real.” My nails dug into his back as his hands moved across my body, my chest, my hips, my thighs. “I never left you. You have always been in my veins. You’re my soul,” he whispered with an ache in his voice.

A warm rush of air surrounded me, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the rug in front of the fire. As his lips moved down my neck, his hands urged my shirt up. I let the key I was clenching fall to the floor, daring to give in to him, daring to be his Genevieve once more.

This was the point where I always froze when the others held me, the point where I had to hold everything in, send my mind somewhere else, focus on anything but their touch, the emotions the moment demanded. It was the point where I turned on autopilot and built a wall around my heart and soul. And more times than not, this was the point where I said no, where I stopped myself from going too far. I had to. It was a physical lie, one I could not let my body speak.

I couldn’t force myself to do that now. Even when I told myself that I would freeze him solid if I didn’t—control would not come.

When I felt his hands on my skin, on my chest, I gasped as if it were the first time I’d ever been touched. I fought to pull his shirt off, to feel the fire of his flesh against mine, to feel someone for the first time.

We both sighed as our skin touched. We wanted more. We wanted everything.

I kept telling myself that this was wrong, that in life I didn’t know him, that I wasn’t this kind of girl, but my soul told me I was an idiot, that he was the only one I’d ever really known.

All at once, I realized what all the hype about being skin-to-skin with someone was about. I realized how insanely awesome a seductive touch was.

He couldn’t get close enough to me. We rolled across the floor, both demanding control of this passionate moment, only giving in for a second when one of us found that sweet spot, that touch that made our insides crumble with expectation.

I gasped, “Sebastian,” and that word ignited him. A desire that I didn’t even know was possible between two souls erupted. A few beats later, there was nothing between us but the night itself and we still weren’t close enough to satisfy either of us.

Every touch of his hands, every movement of his body left me yearning for more, to get closer. Dead or not, I’d never felt more alive.

For the first time ever, sweat glistened across my body. I was on fire. It felt so good to be on fire, not to be paralyzed by the cold, to be touched…it was almost painful, but it was a good pain, a pain I would yearn for a thousand times over.

This war of control, to see who could make who sigh and moan and how we could do just that, went on for an eternity, long enough for the fire beside us to dwindle to nothing.

Exhausted, we laid in each other’s arms. My fingertips traced every muscle across his firm chest as his long fingertips outlined the tattoo on my arm, my seven flowers, my seven devils.

A glance from him caused the fire next to us to come to life again, and the blanket across the back of the couch to wrap around us.

He rolled to his side, pulling my body against his, wanting to feel my skin against him.

A blush that made no sense for me to have came across my skin. “I’ve never felt warmth before,” I whispered.

An aching echoed in his gray eyes. “Yes, you have,” he promised, stealing a slow, tender kiss.

“We’ve made this worse, haven’t we?” I asked timidly. After what we’d shared, it would be impossible for either of us to deny a wish, a plea from the other, but neither of us wanted the same thing. I wasn’t prepared to die, and he wasn’t prepared to save me.

He pulled my leg across him and wrapped his long arm around my waist, holding me against him as tightly as he could. “Tell me you trust me.”

I raised my fingertips to trace his dominant profile. “I’ve had to learn to trust myself.”

“What happened after I left? How did you get here?”

That was a loaded question. Twin realities. Those two words were in my memories. They are side-by-side, one light and one dark. I knew there was a divide, one we called The Fall. I knew that The Fall was what our people were trying to close, that souls were moving through it; damaged, tattered souls. Bringing darkness to light. And now, apparently, according to Phoenix I’d moved this home to the dark side. I shivered as I remembered the last scene I witnessed in the North Wing, that awful howling noise coming from the dome room, the purple fire.

“I don’t know…flames. I know there were flames,” I said as I pulled him a little closer.

“Nothing in this house has shown you that time—the details of it?”

“I tend to avoid memories that are painful.”

“You never looked for me?” he asked with a tremble of jealousy in his tone.

“I looked for two beats.”

His jaw clenched with suspicion. “How many beats did Mason give you? Wilder, and the other one, Gavin?”

His hand settled above my heart. Whatever jealousy he was considering feeling faded when he felt the thunder of my heart through my skin.

Truth be told, Gavin never made my heart race at all. Wilder did a time or two, but only when he was angry, and I definitely never went this far with him. Mason was the only one that came close, and I can’t even explain why. Maybe it was because he lived on the edge of life but never intended to...maybe it was because he was just as playful as he was dominant and the shift in his composure always caught me off guard.

“Only one boy has given me two beats. I’ve only really felt his touch…” Pain filled his eyes. “And sadly, I never knew him when I was alive.” Relief took over the fire in his gaze.

“You’re going to have to let go,” he said as his hand reached to caress my bottom lip. “She knows who you are now. She will throw everything she has at you.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“This is a different plane.”

“Same game, though. I feel more vindicated fighting over souls than I ever did fighting over money.”

“I’ll find them, I’ll set them free…let go,” he pleaded.

“You want me to die in your arms? For you to pop in, have your way with me—then send me to the grave?” I all but yelled as I sat up and started violently pulling my clothes on. “Think again. You left before, and I survived. I’ll survive again. Go fight whatever war you’re fighting. Go run with whatever circle you and Skylynn are in. Let me be.”

I was dressed and standing by the time I finished my rant. In a beat, he was, too.

“What is it with this rage?” he asked, reaching for my waist, stopping me from gathering my key and continuing my hunt to find the lock it went to. He knew just as well as I did that the mood swings I was fighting were way out of character. “What happened when I left?”

I pushed away from him. “I don’t remember that part. I can’t get past you leaving in the first place. And I would appreciate it if you would quit trying to create another sad goodbye. Let me be.”

He tensed. “That is what you see? In your mind right now. Me walking away from you?”

“No, only when you look at me like it’s the last time you are going to see me. Sebastian—Phoenix, I have a responsibility to stop this woman. I am owed vengeance. I do not need a knight in shining armor to deliver that for me.”

“Genevieve, you are not an angry soul. Stubborn, but not angry. Do not give her the victory of allowing you to turn into a vengeful soul.”

He acted as if that were the only option. As if what Skylynn proposed, him turning me into whatever he was, was not an option. That hurt. That sliced me in two. Why was he so set on walking me to the grave?

“You lived next to this demon most of your life, you survived, you won. I’ll finish it for you.”

“Newsflash: I didn’t survive her.”

“Why will you not let me do this for you?” he bellowed.

“Because you are not the one that promised my grandmother that you would set her son free, get that woman out of our house, I did. That was me. And don’t say it doesn’t matter because I was dead. We were both dead when that promise was made. She knew I was gone and still asked for that vow. I’ve never passed the buck in my life, and I’m not about to start now.”

“Pick a war, Love. One second you want to freeze her, the next you’re unlocking something. Now, now you want her out and to set some uncle free—an uncle you lost long ago.”

“I didn’t know I lost him. I thought he was whipped. I want all of the above. You cleared up the confusion, that key unlocks trapped souls—my uncle is one of those—and if Rasure is dead, then she is out of my house.” I reached down and grabbed the key. “I’m fine. You can go do whatever the hell it is you have to do. My brother Ben is not going to let them pull the plug on me. He will buy me the time I need to figure this out.”

I was in his arms before the next beat of my heart. “How many times do you think you can crash into that lake, live this day over and over? How many times can your friends withstand that? It will break you. Tear your mind into shreds. You’ll forget your ambitions, only to remember them again and twist and twist in this vicious cycle.”

I glanced at the floor to the spot we’d lost ourselves in for hours, to where I felt warmth for the first time. A vague smile played at the corners of my mouth. “You’re telling me that I will relive this day over and over, these last few hours.” My eyes rose to meet his. “I’d dive in that lake a million times over if it lands me here, and in-between those points, I’ll figure this out.”

He cupped my face with his strong hands. “Why do you have to make this so hard on me? It’s bad enough that I found you, only to lose you again.”

I reached for his hands. “I’m not the one who left, then. I’m not going to leave now. You make whatever choice you feel like you have to.”

“You’re not playing with me? You really do remember me?” he questioned.

“What kind of girl do you think I am? Do you think I would have even let you kiss my hand if I didn’t have memories of you?” I nodded to the floor. “Do you think I would let the walls I’ve always hid behind down for just anyone?”

He let his hands fall from my face and brushed his fingers through his hair as he clenched his jaw.

“Why does that make you mad?” I asked, feeling rejected, embarrassed that I’d revealed so much to him.

He let his arms fall and gazed at me. “When I found you, my plan was to ease your transition into death. It was going to be painstaking for me because I remember every breath, every poetic movement of your body…but it was supposed to be nothing for you. I would stand by your side through the cycle of your last moments, then walk you to death, send you safely on your way. You weren’t supposed to feel the pain I feel.”

I reached for his hand. “I don’t understand what war you’re fighting, but I know it has to be important, that you would have never left us if it wasn’t. Fight it. Leave me be…maybe one day we’ll both win.”

His painful stare dove into my soul. “When I left you before, it was not for the war I’m fighting today. When I returned, our home was burning. I could see you in the fire, hear you call my name. When I ran into that fire, you were not there and I became what I am today. The war I fight now was weaved from that point, every spell, every plot, every deal made with the devil had one underlying purpose: for me to find you.” He moved closer to me. “When Skylynn handed me that scarf, I felt alive again—whole. I knew that you were real, not some distant dream that I’d fabricated to give me peace. That moment was shattered when she told me you were in the veil, when I realized I was too late once again.”

“Better late than never,” I said gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to die, and I plan to avoid the aftermath at every cost.”

“You don’t how dangerous that is.”

I swallowed nervously. “I’m scared, Sebastian. I don’t want to die, and fighting Rasure gives me an excuse, a reason to hold on.”

“She’s the only reason you want to hold on?” he asked as anger and jealousy masked his flawless image.

I knew what he was looking for: a declaration of love, for me to tell him that I didn’t want to leave him now that I’d found him, that I couldn’t bear it…but I’d never told anyone I loved them in this life, never begged anyone to stay with me. I didn’t know how, and I was too scared to try.

I clutched the key in my hand and turned to inspect the clock on the mantle, but as I reached for it everything around me shifted and changed.

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

 

I was standing behind the bookcase that led to my room. My insides fell into a thousand pieces…I’d expected Phoenix to appear in front of me and demand that I tell him what I was too scared to say, demand it the way Mason, Wilder and Gavin had—only this time, I would be able to say such things. This anger—this quick switch in my emotions was scaring me. I’m sure it was scaring Phoenix, too. As he held me, he solidified those memories in the North Wing. I knew in the life we lived together I was the calm one. He was the one that lived on the edge, which was more than likely why he was doubting if all of me was still here. At this point, I even doubted it.

When he didn’t appear, my breath turned to fog. I felt cold and confused. I slid down the wall, holding my legs to my body, and squeezed my eyes closed as layers of ice began to appear around me. I was standing between the life I had as Phoenix’s Genevieve and the Indie I was in this life, and right now I had no idea what I was fighting for. I just knew I didn’t—I couldn’t let go.

I couldn’t figure out how one second I was living a very routine life firmly grounded in reality with nothing more than a few odd flaws and family drama to deal with, and the next I was aware of evil. I was aware of a cosmic war of light and darkness, a past that wasn’t even in this reality. Before my death, I was blind. As I perished on the lakeshore, my eyes were opened only to find myself in the hell of darkness. In the nest of a woman who bore darkness, who in some way, if only by association, had taken Phoenix away so long ago, and in this young life my family.

Rage started to boil in my soul once more. I couldn’t let her get away with this. No matter what it cost me. I could not let her bring this much pain and grief to yet another soul.

I clenched my wrist, the mark Phoenix had put on me of that small falcon in flight. The ice began to vanish, and I found the strength to push my rage away. I stood and shoved the bookcase forward, prepared to go back to the library and find the lock this key went to.

In my room, I found the guys. Gavin was leaning against my bed and had his laptop open and his tablet at his side. Wilder was pacing the floor, and Mason was reading whatever was on Gavin’s screen as he lay across the bed and peered over Gavin’s shoulder. Cadence was nowhere in sight.

I glanced back to the dark passageway. I felt like I was waking up from a dream. My life as Indie was only a few steps away, but my past was calling me home.

“Indie?” Gavin said carefully.

I raked my fingers through my short blonde hair before turning to face him. I had a fear I was going to have to break it to all of them, to Mason for the second time, that we were dead. Phoenix was right. I wasn’t going to be able to handle this cycle.

I turned to see all of them staring at me with wide eyes.

The room began to freeze over. Unconsciously, I reached for the falcon that was now on my wrist. Warmth came then, not only to me, but also to the room.

“Death looks good on you,” Wilder said with an odd disdain as the scent of lilies he always carried seemed to hover over me.

I furrowed my brow. “You know?” I whispered.

He nodded once.

“Why are you guys looking at me like that?” I asked timidly, unable to handle all of their attention at once.

“We’ve never seen you blush…you look more alive in death than you ever did before,” Mason said with a curious smirk. He was the one that could always read me like a book. In truth, he knew me better than all of them combined.

His words made me blush even more as the thought of Phoenix came to mind. “Where’s Cadence?”

They all looked at each other, agreeing not to answer me. “Did…did she move on?” I asked as tears encased my throat. I assumed that Mason had told them what happened to us, that they knew we were barely holding on to life at this moment.

“She’s at school, or at least trying to go,” Gavin answered in a nonchalant way.

“She knows we’re dead, and she went to school?”

“We didn’t tell her,” Gavin said, focusing on what he was reading. By his obvious lack of concern, I could tell he was furious with her.

I glanced at Mason, and he quickly looked away.

“She deserves to know…even if you guys are mad at her,” I mumbled.

Gavin smirked. “We figured it out on our own. Why can’t she?”

“Mason didn’t tell you?” I countered, glancing between Gavin and Wilder.

“I knew at the bar. That’s why I sent Paula away, hoping we wouldn’t crash this time.”

“Is that your girl’s name?” I said with a sneer. “I disapprove. Her diet has me bothered.” I could not get the images of her sucking the energy out of us on that bank out of my head.

That snide remark made Mason and Gavin grin.

“I was well aware of her diet long before that night,” Wilder assured me.

“What? You knew?”

He crossed his arms and let his steel blue eyes fall onto me. “Gavin emailed me. I headed back here, she followed.” Wilder’s eyes echoed a desire that had never been this intense before. “I thought you knew I was seeing her.”

“How would I know? You didn’t say.”

“Cadence set us up, told me this girl had been at a few charity events here and was new in the town I was in.” He let his stare linger for a second before he spoke again. “Cadence even sent a few emails, making sure we were getting along okay.”

If I didn’t know any better, I would swear he was trying to make me mad. But I wasn’t going there with him.

“I’m sure I forgot she told me.”

His eyes slowly raked over me. I couldn’t figure out what emotion was hiding behind them, what he was trying to say without a word. All I knew was that I felt a burning guilt when I stared at him. He was dead because of me. They all were dead because of me.

“I suppose death can mess with your head, make you forget things, even create things. Feels like a dream to me.” Wilder focused his eyes. “We need to hold on to each other and not let illusions convince us that something beyond death is happening here.” He crossed his arms. “I don’t think you going off and hiding behind a locked library door is a wise thing to do alone.”

Coded conversation, which was typical for Wilder and me. He had a way of making random remarks that would call out what my mind was struggling with. Right now, he was telling me that because we were dead my mind had fabricated Skylynn and Phoenix and I needed to steer clear of anything that wasn’t firmly grounded in my reality or mind before I died.

“I’ve never been alone, Wilder. Not once.” I heard the ice cracking as it formed against the walls. “I’m lucid and determined in this dream of death. I’m not hiding from anyone or anything.”

“Lucid enough to make you blush,” Wilder said as he raised his brow. “Your mind is creating a life you wanted but never had. Maybe you should ask yourself what is fueling the illusions you are seeing. Maybe the real deal has been in front of you the whole time and you were just too preoccupied to notice.”

This is what happens when you do not resolve arguments, when you act as if they never happened. I’d always acted like our last fight never happened and let a few text messages hold on to the friendship I thought we could have. I felt a repelling sensation in my gut. I wanted away from him, and I hate to say it, but I regretted letting him get as close to me as I did. I knew it would never work, but I pretended it could for far too long. I suppose it was because I knew he was holding back, too, and I wanted to know for sure what I was throwing away before I did.

After finding Phoenix, after having a rich past consume me to the point where I felt like I lived it yesterday, I knew this almost lover, Wilder, wasn’t even close to what I was looking for. And because of my foolishness, Wilder was now here with me for God knows how long. I’d imprisoned him and was bound to pay the price for that act.

“Back off, Wilder,” Gavin said as he waved me over to him. Thankful for the escape, I collapsed next to him on the floor.

Gavin glanced over me once more. “You good? Too much too fast?”

“If you only knew what was going on in my head, I bet you’d have enough ideas for ten books to back it up.”

“It’s only going to get weirder, Indie. Mason and I are having wicked flashbacks, too.”

I glanced up at Mason, who was lying across the bed looking over our shoulders. He gave me a nod to confirm.

“What kind of flashbacks?”

“Ones that are here, but not here,” Gavin said, catching my gaze again as he kept his voice down.

“Dual reality?” I asked.

Both he and Mason nodded.

“You guys have lost it,” Wilder bit out. “Dual what? We’re dead. Simple as that. Your minds are just on some wicked trip. We need to figure out how to get undead or move on, one or the other. We can’t stay like this.”

Ignoring him, Gavin went on. “I never told you this, but around Halloween these paranormal hunters showed up, wanting to film your house, the grounds around it. Rasure blocked them from even asking you. I only knew about it because I was at the bar and they were asking if anyone heard of any wicked stories about your property. A few people sent them to my table. I figured they were full of B.S. and were just looking for gossip on your family.”

“This house wasn’t haunted until we died,” I said as I rolled my eyes. I remembered seeing a few images when I was younger, but they never made themselves known. I figured it was just the flashes of memories that were producing them.

“Right. Well, anyway,” Gavin said, shaking off the fact that he’d seen his sister’s ghost here one night. “I asked them why they were focused on your house, and it turns out that one of them had a brother or brother-in-law, something, that was on the crew that built Rasure’s wing a few years back. He said every time they went to plow down one of the oak trees in the way, one of the guys would get hurt or sick. They even had machinery break down. They were set to burn it when a court order caused them to redraw their plans and move a hundred feet to the east. They were relieved that they didn’t have to deal with the tree anymore and shrugged it off like it was nothing.”

“That was my court order,” I stated with disdain. If Rasure had gone through with the original plans she’d had, the library, along with the North Wing, would’ve had to have been rebuilt. Not only that, but the grounds around the family’s memorial plot would have been reduced by almost half. It took an act of Congress, but I stopped her from invading my parent’s eternal rest.

“Yeah, I know,” Gavin said under his breath as he reached to squeeze my knee. He was the one that had always kept me calm when Rasure got the best of me, when I was just a girl. “Anyway, the weirdness didn’t stop there. Later, when they were building the foundation, they thought they came across some logs that were buried or something. Turned out they weren’t logs, but roots; roots that came, at least in part, from that oak tree. They had a ton of specialists come out and survey the land, and the entire crew threatened to bail if they were told to cut into that tree. Long story short, they figured out that the roots connected to four other trees as well. They estimated that the trees were well over two hundred years old, which stopped them from taking them down, even if it was from the ground up. They managed to lay the foundation higher than they first planned.”

“They wanted to check out my trees? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That, and other things. They said they picked up on rumors or whatever saying to never go to Falcon Manor if you were an artist, that it would drain you and you would never create again.”

I threw a nasty, unbelieving glare at him, which caused him to laugh. I was a magnet for artists. Mason wrote most of his songs here, Gavin’s short stories always reminded me of my house, and Wilder’s paintings of this place would take anyone’s breath away.

“Yeah, I told them they were insane, too, then they started giving me all these new definitions of vampires, saying they took energy, not blood, and that creativity was their delicacy. Anyway, I told them they were nuts and sent them on their way, but I was curious so I asked Mason if he ever hit a wall around you or your house. Then we called Wilder.”

I glanced up at him.

“I hit a wall the day that girl came into my life,” he said with a smirk.

“You guys knew about Escorts and didn’t tell me?” I asked with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“About what?” Wilder asked in dismay.

I heard a whoosh of wind, and my stomach caved in. I didn’t want to be in the same room with Phoenix and them.

“She listens,” I heard Skylynn say. With a sigh of relief, I looked over my shoulder to see her lying on her stomach beside Mason. “Escorts, they take energy.”

“And what do you take?” Mason asked as his chocolate eyes melted over her.

“Cool it, drummer boy. Not my type.”

“What is your type?” he asked with a boyish grin.

She ignored him as she pointed her finger to the screen. “Slide your magic box down so I can see that.”

“My magic what?” Gavin said with a smirk. I elbowed him, and finally he listened.

“What do you want to see?” he asked her as he scrolled through the images he was looking at before.

“What was that drawing thing?” she asked.

“A 3D version of what they think is under the house. Cutting one tree would have killed four others.”

I felt my body tense. That 3D image looked a lot like the one I’d seen in the North Wing, the one that the necklace and fire had brought to life. It wasn’t as detailed, but there was no doubt what this image was imitating: twin realities.

On the screen, you could see a blueprint of the manor, the five trees in question. When he tilted the image, you could see the roots. They looked like a giant sphere underground. It was really beautiful the way nature had connected beneath the surface.

“Holy Hell,” Skylynn said under her breath. She reached for a pen and started to draw on the screen, but Gavin jerked it away.

“This is not a magic box. You can’t draw on it.”

She vanished from where she was and appeared at Wilder’s side with paper and marker in hand. “You. Draw that.”