B00AO57VOY EBOK (10 page)

I should have known it
wouldn’t last.

The second Grams finished
straightening the room around us, she took a stool across from me at the island
and gave me a piercing look over the rim of her coffee mug.  “Now, sweetheart,
I want you to tell me what happened last night.”

“Nathan already told you,” I
muttered, wishing I’d escaped to the solitude of a hot shower when I’d had the
chance.

“Yes, and it was Nathan’s
description of last night’s exciting events that bothers me,” she said softly,
giving me a troubled look. 

“What happened to you in
that morgue?” Nathan asked gently, holding me closer when I started to tense up. 
“I’ve never seen anything like that, Em.  You were
gone
.  Your body was
there, but you weren’t in it.  I couldn’t even sense you anymore and you were
standing right next to me.” 

“I don’t really know what
happened,” I told them honestly, talking to my hands where they rested on the
counter in front of me.  “Casey had already crossed over to the other side, but
there was another ghost there.  She showed me what to do.”

“I don’t understand,” Grams
said with a frown.  “How could she show you what to do, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know,” I told her,
shrugging.  “She was…different.  I can’t explain it, but she wasn’t like any of
the other ghosts I’ve seen.”

Grams and Nathan exchanged a
worried look.  “And what did you see when you followed this spirit’s
instructions?”

“I saw the last few minutes
of Casey’s life,” I whispered, forcing my eyes back up to Grams’ face.  When
she sucked in a sharp breath, I wondered if I looked as miserable as I felt. 
For someone who’d been communing with the dead her entire life, I’d never felt
more haunted. “I was there with her when she died.  I was standing right next
to her.  And I know this sounds crazy, but I think she
saw
me.”

“Why do you think that, sweetheart?”
Grams asked quietly, reaching for my hand. 

“Because she looked right at
me.  She talked to me.”

I could tell by the look she
exchanged with Nathan that Grams was trying to not ask, but I knew she wasn’t
going to make it.  Sure enough, less than a second later she whispered, “What
did she say, sweetheart?”

“She told me to run,” I
whispered, starting to cry.  “She looked at me and told me to run.  She died in
my place and she was trying to save me.  He was carving her up like a damn
jack-o-lantern and she tried to save
me
!”

By the time I finished
talking, the tears had turned to sobs and my whisper had turned into a howl of
misery and rage.  I was just so damned
mad
.  I was mad at myself for not
finishing Jack when I had the chance.  I was mad at Casey for trying to save me
when I didn’t deserve it.  And I was furious with Jack, my Jack, for letting
himself be possessed by a demon in the first damned place!

But my real rage directed
toward the demon himself.  How many more ways would he find to torment me?  How
many more scars would he leave behind on my heart and soul before he was done
with me? 

“Do you remember what the
carving looked like, sweetheart?” Grams asked when I started to calm down.  The
way her face had paled told me that I’d just given her an important clue.

“I don’t have to remember,”
I told her, feeling even more ashamed of myself.  “I took a picture with my
phone before we…um…”  I shot a wary look at Nathan, wondering if bringing up our
game of hide and seek was a good idea.  “Before the police arrived,” I finished
weakly.

“May I see?” Grams asked,
the tense tone of her voice a perfect complement to her pale, strained
expression.

Hesitantly, I pulled my
phone out of the pocket of my hoodie.  Rather than hand it over to her, though,
I just sat there and stared down at it.  I mean, it was bad enough that I had
taken the picture in the first place.  Showing it to someone else…just seemed
wrong, somehow.  Still, it wasn’t like I was posting it on Facebook or
something.  This was
Grams
.  And if it could somehow help lead us to
Jack, wasn’t it worth it?

It was that thought, the
thought of stopping Jack before he could hurt someone else, that made me pull
up the picture I had taken and pass the phone across the counter to Grams.  She
looked at the picture for a long moment, her eyebrows drawing down in a frown.

“What does it mean?” 

“I have no idea,” she said, shaking
her head.  “Nate, have you ever seen anything like this?”

I knew the second Grams
turned the phone around that something was wrong.  Every muscle in Nathan’s
body seemed to tense at once, and I looked over my shoulder to see that his
pale face was suddenly bone white.  His eyes were glued to the screen in front
of him and there was something about the way he was staring at the design
carved in Casey’s skin that made
my
skin start to crawl like an army of
ants had moved in and decided to make it home.

“Nate?  Have you seen it
before?” Grams asked, giving him a concerned look.

“Yeah, I’ve seen it before,”
he said, his voice almost a whisper.

“Well, what is it?” I asked,
frowning when he didn’t bother to elaborate.

“A reminder,” he said, turning
to look at me.  The strange, almost dead look in his eyes was enough to chill
me to my very core.  “And the answer I’ve spent four centuries trying to find.”

“What answer would that be?”
I asked, even though I was pretty damn sure I didn’t really want to know.

“I know who our demon is,”
he said, never taking his cold dead eyes from mine.  “Now I just have to find
out how to get rid of him.”

“Really?”  Yeah, I am
such
a glutton for punishment.  “Who is it?”

“Bastian St. Jean,” he said,
watching as my eyes widened. 

“Wait!  Wasn’t that your
best friend’s name when you were human?  Why the hell would he want to kill me
if he was your best friend?”

“Because I killed the woman he
loved four hundred years ago.”

I felt like he’d punched
me.  Seriously, I wouldn’t have been more surprised if he had.  I’d lived under
the same roof with Nathan for more than a month.  I’d been bitten by him not
once, but
twice
and lived to tell the tale.  And somewhere along the
way, I’d given myself the idea that just because he was a vampire didn’t mean
he was a killer.

And he’d just shattered that
illusion like stained glass in the path of a wrecking ball.

“Her name was Gabriella
Bénichou
,” Nathan
continued, looking away from the horror on my face.  When I pulled away from
him and slid off my stool, he didn’t try to stop me.  “Like Bastian, she came
from a wealthy merchant family.  We played together as children, the three of
us.  That’s the meaning of the three arrows.  The center arrow was Gabby and
the two crossed arrows were for Bastian and I.  We sealed our correspondence to
each other with that symbol embossed in the wax even into adulthood.”

“Over the years, it became
apparent to everyone that Bastian’s feelings for Gabby were more than
friendly,” Nathan continued, his gaze far away.  “Without her knowledge, he
began to meet with her father to gain her hand in marriage.  And he succeeded.”

I found myself getting angry
on Gabriella’s behalf.  Not only had she been betrayed by her father, but by
her friend, someone she’d trusted.  Seriously, did
all
guys just suck?

“On the pretense of celebrating
her birthday, Gabby’s father planned a huge ball in her honor.  The wealthy
came from miles around to attend.  Even a few of the local nobles accepted an
invitation.  Only Bastian and old man
Bénichou
knew the true
purpose of the party.  It was a betrothal ball.  Unfortunately, they didn’t
tell the intended bride.”

Oh, wow.  Even I could see
this story was a tragedy in the making.  Shakespeare himself couldn’t have done
better.  A lovesick idiot, a reluctant bride, and a handsome best friend. 
Yeah, all the players needed for the kind of scenario that never seemed to end
well.    

“I shouldn’t have been
there,” Nathan said, his silky voice cracking with the pain of his memories. 
“I was only a month turned, my family had just been slaughtered, and I wasn’t
the most stable of creatures.  But she sent for me, begged me to come, if only
for a little while.  And because I loved her like a sister, because she and
Bastian were the only family I had left, I agreed.  I arrived just in time to
watch Bastian make the mistake that would doom us all.”

“Gabby saw me in the crowd
when her father made the announcement.”  He shook his head back and forth, like
he could get rid of the memory of what happened next that way.  “After the
toasts were made and she was finally released from the swarm of well-wishers,
she headed directly for me.  I could see the tears in her eyes from across the
room.  Not wanting her to lose her composure in front of the crowd, I took her
outside, to the gardens, to get some air.”

“Gabby was inconsolable. 
She loved Bastian, but as a friend not a lover.  I held her as she cried,
knowing she had no choice.  Gabby wasn’t like Bastian or me.  She never would
have defied her father.  Never.  She just needed time to come to terms with the
fate they’d decided for her without ever asking her opinion on the matter.”

He fell silent and Grams and
I exchanged a worried look when we saw a tear slide down his cheek.  For a long
time he just sat there, lost in the memories playing out in his own mind.  When
he finally looked at me again, the sorrow I saw on his face made my heart
ache.  Even when he resumed his tragic tale, his voice soft and low, he didn’t
look away from me.

“She was going to go through
with it,” he whispered.  “It wasn’t so bad, marrying one of your dearest
friends, she said.  But before she could go back into that party and smile and
pretend she was the happiest woman in the world, she just wanted one more minute,
just one, to compose herself.  She asked me to stay with her, and I promised I
would.  And that was when Bastian found us, with her still in my arms and her
tear-stained cheek against my shoulder.”

“I had never seen him as out
of control as he was that night.  He screamed that I’d betrayed him, that
we’d
betrayed him.  He said he’d always known I wanted her, but that I couldn’t
have her, that he had won fair and square like she was some kind of bet we’d
made.  I tried to talk to him, to tell him that he wasn’t making any sense.  My
love for Gabby wasn’t in any way romantic and never had been.  But he was
crazed with jealousy and wine and his unfounded sense of betrayal.”

“He pulled a pistol from his
belt and fired a single shot.  I’ve spent four centuries with that memory
haunting me.  I still see the shock on her face as that bullet hit her in the stomach,
the way she looked up at me and held her blood-covered fingers out as if
begging me to tell her it hadn’t happened.  I was still so young and the smell
of her blood...I lost control.  The next thing I knew she was in my arms again.
 I still remember the taste of her blood on my tongue when I took her life. 
It’s something I will never forget…and never forgive myself for.”

I stood there for a full minute,
not sure what I should say—or if I should say anything at all.  My heart broke
for him.  I couldn’t imagine what that was like, having to spend eternity
knowing you’d killed your best friend, someone who loved you and trusted you. 
To carry that kind of guilt around with no chance of forgiveness must be a Hell
in and of itself.

But Bastian had been as much
to blame as Nathan.  Nathan might have fed on her, but Bastian had
shot
her. 
Was this jerk so full of hate that he couldn’t see that?  So…what?  He’d gotten
it into his head that Nathan had killed his girlfriend so it was perfectly
acceptable for him to kill his?

Oh, this asshole had the
kind of issues even therapy and a strict regimen of medication couldn’t cure!

“The fault was not
Nathaniel’s,” a soft, lyrical voice said behind me just as a wave of warm,
lilac-scented air washed over me.  I turned my head, tearing my eyes from
Nathan’s at long last, to find the ghost from the morgue standing just behind
my left shoulder, her expression sad and her gaze focused on Nathan’s tormented
face.

“It wasn’t?” I asked before
I could stop myself.  I darted a glance in Grams’ direction, unsurprised to
find her watching me through narrowed eyes.

“No, it was not,” the ghost
said, shaking her head sadly.  “To be injured in such a way in that time was
fatal.  He saved his friend from a terrible death by ending her pain quickly. 
You must go to him, comfort him.  That is your duty as his
l'âme sœur
, his soul
mate.  Do not be so foolish as to let history alter your future, Ember.
”